Historical dream account · English · original text
The nurse with the unexpected face
Frederick Greenwood
Imagination in Dreams and Their Study (1894) · Printed pages 33, 34; OCR lines 1135–1161
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I dream that I am ill in bed, and that while talking to a child at my bedside I hear the voice of a nurse, newly arrived, who is speaking with some one in an ante-room. What the woman says I cannot distinguish, but am struck by the pleasant, cheerful, friendly tone of her voice, and (as we often do in like cases when we are awake) I fit the voice with a corresponding face and figure. Presently she comes to the foot of my bed; and, looking up to her, I am astonished at the incongruity of the woman's whole appearance and the voice of her. I expected to see something quite different from this tall, finely-shaped, slender figure, surmounted by a strange sub-sinister face, very small, very pale, with eyes, eyebrows, and hair all of one colour — the colour of fresh gravel. Now, since it was I who imagined the face, why was I so much surprised at it — not expecting it, but confidently expecting something different?
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 33, 34; OCR lines 1135–1161
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
- 7a4c3331c62dc41d96f72c87edeceef4cd5da78481d32451f1f8de6cc4d90199
- Source file SHA-256
- 82370bf037b8dab9a477488f8be6858c63ef9f48d9fd79d699a2a9040c042878
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.