Poe's former room opening into the corridor had invariably attracted him.

He had frequently looked about its bare walls wondering how so great an inspiration could have started from such meagre surroundings.

He had, too, with the romantic imagination of a boy, pictured to himself the kind of man he was, his looks, voice, and manner, and though he had never seen the poet in the flesh, somehow the tones of Richard's voice recalled to him the very picture he had conjured up in his mind in his boyhood days.
St.George had also listened intently, but the impression was quite different from the one made on the younger man.

Temple thought only of Poe's despondency, of his striving for a better and happier life; of his poverty--more than once had he gone down into his own pockets to relieve the poor fellow's urgent necessities, and he was still ready to do it again--a readiness in which he was almost alone, for many of the writer's earlier friends had of late avoided meeting him whenever he passed through Kennedy Square.

Even Kennedy, his life-long friend, had begun to look upon him as a hopeless case.
This antipathy was also to be found in the club.