Historical dream account · English · original text
Silent streets beyond the old quay
Frederick Greenwood
Imagination in Dreams and Their Study (1894) · Printed pages 82, 83; OCR lines 2654–2682
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Many years ago I dreamed of having killed a man by throwing him from the verge of an old, unfrequented quay. The murder itself did not come into the dream, which began (according to my waking remembrance) just after I had turned from the scene. It might have been a dream of horror as well as guilt — of horror, the torment of which, we may suspect, is often tempered by the thought of it as a punishment that atones. But the deed being out of sight, so to speak, in my case horror there was none. The dream was of guilt alone; and whenever I review that vision of myself stealing away through the old streets that bordered the quay (it was early morning and the streets were bathed in a thin clear slanting light), and when I recall my sensations, the whole mind of me an abyss of listening silence, my very footsteps seeming noiseless, and a wide environment of distance standing between me and every passer-by, I believe I really do know the awful solitude a murderer feels, or know it far beyond mere imagining.
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 82, 83; OCR lines 2654–2682
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
- 4e4f605f9dc120af8cbe0261eae03c849e6710ed149e0781a32a9db022cd447e
- Source file SHA-256
- 82370bf037b8dab9a477488f8be6858c63ef9f48d9fd79d699a2a9040c042878
Content notes
- Violence
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.