Project Gutenberg's Pygmalion's Spectacles, by Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

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Title: Pygmalion's Spectacles

Author: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

Release Date: October 5, 2007 [EBook #22893]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _A Martian Odyssey and Others_
published in 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor
spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

PYGMALION'S SPECTACLES

"But what is reality?" asked the gnomelike man. He gestured at the tall
banks of buildings that loomed around Central Park, with their countless
windows glowing like the cave fires of a city of Cro-Magnon people. "All
is dream, all is illusion; I am your vision as you are mine."

Dan Burke, struggling for clarity of thought through the fumes of
liquor, stared without comprehension at the tiny figure of his
companion. He began to regret the impulse that had driven him to leave
the party to seek fresh air in the park, and to fall by chance into the
company of this diminutive old madman. But he had needed escape; this
was one party too many, and not even the presence of Claire with her
trim ankles could hold him there. He felt an angry desire to go
home--not to his hotel, but home to Chicago and to the comparative peace
of the Board of Trade. But he was leaving tomorrow anyway.

"You drink," said the elfin, bearded face, "to make real a dream. Is it
not so? Either to dream that what you seek is yours, or else to dream
that what you hate is conquered. You drink to escape reality, and the
irony is that even reality is a dream."

"Cracked!" thought Dan again.

"Or so," concluded the other, "says the philosopher Berkeley."

"Berkeley?" echoed Dan. His head was clearing; memories of a Sophomore
course in Elementary Philosophy drifted back. "Bishop Berkeley, eh?"

"You know him, then? The philosopher of Idea