a griffin, I hope I may be one always,"
said Miss Westonhaugh quickly, "and I trust my brother is as much a
griffin as ever."

"I am, I assure you," said he. "But Mr. Griggs is quite right, and shows
a profound knowledge of Indian life. No one but a griffin of the
greenest ever gave anybody a rupee in Bombay--or ever will now, I should
think."

"Oh, John, are you going to be cynical too?"

"No, Katharine, I am not cynical at all. I do not think you are quite
sure what a 'cynic' is."

"Oh yes, I know quite well. Diogenes was a cynic, and Saint Jerome, and
other people of that class."

"A man who lives in a tub, and abuses Alexander the Great, and that sort
of thing," remarked Kildare, who had not spoken for some time.

"Mr. Griggs," said John Westonhaugh, "since you are the accused, pray
define what you mean by a cynic, and then Mr. Isaacs, as the accuser,
can have a chance too."

"Very well, I will. A man is a cynic if he will do no good to any one
because he believes every one past improvement. Most men who do good
actions are also cynics, because they well know that they are doing more
harm than good by their charity. Mr. Westonhaugh has the discrimination
to appreciate this, and therefore he is not a cynic."

"It is well you introduced the saving clause, Griggs," said Isaacs to me
from across the table. "I am going to define you now; for I strongly
suspect that you are the very ideal of a philosopher of that class. You
are a man who believes in all that is good and beautiful in theory, but
by too much indifference to good in small measures--for you want a thing
perfect, or you want it not at all---you have abstracted yourself from
perceiving it anywhere, except in the most brilliant examples of heroism
that history affords. You set up in your imagination an ideal which you
call the good man, and you are utterly dissatisfied with anything less
perfect than perfection. The result is that, though you might do a good
action from your philosophical longing to approach the ideal in your own
person, you will not suffer yourself to believe that others are
consciously or unconsciously striving to make themselves better also.
And you do not believe that any one can be made a better man by any one
else, by any exterior agency, by any good that you or others may do to
him. What makes you what you are is the fact that you really cherish
this beautiful ideal image of your worship and reverence, and love it;
but for this