All the scribblers looked up. "You don't mean to say seriously that you have burnt your poems?"
"Yes; but I do not care to discuss my reasons. You do not feel as I do."
"You mean to say that you have burnt The Last Struggle—the poem you told us about the other night?"
"Yes, I felt I could not reconcile its teaching, or I should say the tendency of its teaching, to my religion. I do not regret—besides, I had to do it; I felt I was going off my head. I should have gone mad. I have been through agonies. I could not think. Thought and pain and trouble were as one in my brain. I heard voices…. I had to do it. And now a great calm has come. I feel much better."
"You are a curious chap."
Then at the end of a long silence John said, as if he wished to change the conversation—
"Even though I did burn my pessimistic poem, the world will not go without one. You are writing a poem on Schopenhauer's philosophy. It is hard to associate pessimism with you."
"Only because you take the ordinary view of the tendency of pessimistic teaching," said Mike. "If you want a young and laughing world, preach Schopenhauer at every street corner; if you want a sober utilitarian world, preach Comte."
"Doesn't much matter what the world is as long as it is not sober," chuckled Platt, the paragraph-writing youth at the bottom of the table.
"Hold your tongue!" cried Drake, and he lighted another cigarette preparatory to fixing his whole attention on the paradox that Mike was about to enounce.