[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales January 1929.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams.Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightlyexcursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely,unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle agehardened upon him he felt these liberties slipping away little bylittle, until at last he was cut off altogether. No more could hisgalleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, orhis elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled, whereforgotten palaces with veined ivory columns sleep lovely and unbrokenunder the moon.
He had read too much of things as they are, and talked with too manypeople. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into thelogical relations of things, and analyze the processes which shapedhis thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgottenthat all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among whichthere is no difference betwixt those born of real things and thoseborn of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above theother. Custom had dinned into his ears a superstitious reverence forthat which tangibly and physically exists, and had made him secretlyashamed to dwell in visions. Wise men told him his simple fancies wereinane and childish, and he believed it because he could see that theymight easily be so. What he failed to recall was that the deeds ofreality are just as inane and childish, and even more absurd becausetheir actors persist in fancying them full of meaning and purpose asthe blind purpose grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something back tonothing again, neither heeding nor knowing the wishes or existence ofthe minds that flicker for a second now and then in the darkness.
They had chained him down to things that are, and had then explainedthe workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world.When he complained, and longed to escape into twilight realms wheremagic molded all the little vivid fragments and prized associations ofhis mind into vistas of breathless expectancy and unquenchable delight,they turned him instead toward the new-found prodigies of science,bidding him find wonder in the atom's vortex and mystery in the sky'sdimensions. And when he had failed to find these boons in things whoselaws are known and measurable, they told him he lacked imagination, andwas immature because he preferred dream-illusions to the illusions ofour physical creation.
So Carter had tried to do as others did, and pretended that the commonevents and emotions of earthly minds were more important than thefantasies of rare and delicate souls. He did not dissent when they toldhim that the animal pain of a stuck pig or dyspeptic plowman in reallife is a greater thing than the peerless beauty of Narath with itshundred carven gates and domes of chalcedony, which he dimly rememberedfrom his dreams; and under their guidance he cultivated a painstakingsense of pity and tragedy.
Once in a while, though, he could not help seeing how shallow, fickle,and meaningless all human aspirations are, and how emptily our realimpulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold. Thenhe would have recourse to the polite laughter they had taught him touse against the extravagance and artificiality of dreams; for he sawthat the daily life of our world is every inch as extravagant andartificial, and far less worthy of respect because of its poverty inbeauty and its