Historical dream account · English · original text
The cold hand on the mantelpiece
Frederick Greenwood
Imagination in Dreams and Their Study (1894) · Printed pages 197; OCR lines 6171–6198
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One night I dreamt that, making a call on some matter of business I was shown into a fine great drawing-room and asked to wait. Accordingly, I went over to the fire-place in the usual English way, proposing to wait there. And there, after the same fashion, I lounged with my arm upon the mantel-piece; but only for a few moments. For feeling that my fingers had rested on something strangely cold, I looked, and saw that they lay on a dead hand: a woman's hand newly cut from the wrist. Though I woke in horror on the instant, this dream was quite forgotten — at any rate for the time — when I did next day make a call on some unimportant matter of business, was shown into a pretty little room adorned with various knick-knacks, and then was asked to wait. Glancing by chance toward the mantel-piece (the dream of the previous night still forgotten), what should I see upon it but the hand of a mummy, broken from the wrist. It was a very little hand, and on it was a ring that would have been a 'gem ring ' if the dull red stone in it had been genuinely precious. Wherefore I concluded that it was a woman's hand.
Source & context
A historical dream account recorded by Frederick Greenwood in Imagination in Dreams and Their Study (1894). The recorder and any separately identified dreamer are distinguished. The prose was checked against the printed page scans; historical claims belong to the source and are not presented as verified events. This is not a Synastry community submission.
Frederick Greenwood, Imagination in Dreams and Their Study (London: John Lane; New York: Macmillan, 1894). Digitized copy contributed by University of California Libraries via Internet Archive. Original English text; editorial descriptive title and documented OCR normalization by Synastry.
1894 is the publication year, not a supplied date of the dream. Any date mentioned in the narrative remains the source wording.
Original English text published in 1894; Frederick Greenwood died in 1909. Internet Archive identifies this edition as NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT (United States). No modern translation or editorial additions are included. Public Domain Mark denotes status, not an exclusive grant.
Source locator and text provenance
Printed pages 197; OCR lines 6171–6198
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Original prose retained with documented OCR corrections, line-wrap normalization and page-furniture removal. Editorial title added. Surrounding theoretical discussion omitted. Passage boundaries and all narrative events checked against the 1894 page scans.
Typesetter line-end word divisions normalized; lexical hyphens retained. Quotation marks identifying the outer published architect quotation and a numbered footnote marker are omitted; speaking characters’ quotation marks remain. Full raw spans and page images retained in source review evidence.
- Account text SHA-256
- c66ffff268cc4bb14659e343d6f3dfe40d6b3cca7565a57e18feec6b98c0c42d
- Source file SHA-256
- 82370bf037b8dab9a477488f8be6858c63ef9f48d9fd79d699a2a9040c042878
Content notes
- Disturbing imagery
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.