Historical dream account · English · original text
The silent visitor at my bedside
William Dean Howells (1837–1920)
Impressions and Experiences (1896) · I Talk of Dreams, printed pp. 112
Dreamer identified by the source: William Dean Howells
Read in your language or share a constellation ↗
A great many years ago, when I was young, I dreamed that my father, who was in another town, came into the room where I was really lying asleep, and stood by my bed. He wished to greet me, after our separation, but he reasoned that if he did so, I should wake, and he turned and left the room without touching me. This process in his mind, which I knew as clearly and accurately as if it had apparently gone on in my own, was apparently confined to his mind as absolutely as anything could be that was not spoken or in any wise uttered.
Undated youthful recollection; no inferred year
Source & context
A recollected youthful dream in Howells's nonfiction essay. The adjacent qualification explicitly says the father's apparent reasoning was of the dreamer's own agency, like any other part of the dream. It is not evidence of telepathy or a real visit. Its actions, people and author differ from Laud's father dream. No exact year is inferred from a great many years ago. Source qualification (Howells, printed p.112): "Of course it was of my agency, like any other part of the dream, and it was something like the operation of the novelist's intention through the mind of his characters. But in this there is the author's consciousness that he is doing it all himself, while in my dream, this reasoning in the mind of another was something that I felt myself mere witness of. In fact there is no analogy, so far as I can make out, between the process of literary invention and the process of dreaming."
William Dean Howells (1837–1920), own recalled dream in Impressions and Experiences (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1896), I Talk of Dreams, printed pp. 112. Original-edition witness: Internet Archive. This is a published recollection in a humorous nonfiction essay. Original wording and qualifications retained; descriptive title and navigation themes added by Synastry.
Undated youthful recollection; no inferred year; exact modern date not assigned.
Public domain in the United States (1896 edition) ↗
Original 1896 English edition, confirmed by printed title page and Library of Congress September 25, 1896 deposit stamp. The archive item states the Library of Congress is unaware of copyright restrictions for the item. The old published text predates 1931 and has an expired-US-copyright basis; Howells died in 1920, so ordinary life-plus-70 terms have elapsed. No modern translation or scholarly edition is used; no new CC licence or blanket worldwide clearance is asserted.
Source locator and text provenance
I Talk of Dreams, printed pp. 112
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Only scan-witnessed OCR, line/page furniture and punctuation spacing repairs. Editorial title and navigation metadata added. No synthetic dream prose, modern translation, calendar conversion or omitted authored qualification.
- Account text SHA-256
- 90b24e12de8ecabeb42c23c3b3d34941ab5eee0d759abf6f255f8d2407ee2dde
- Source file SHA-256
- 8ba32ef53e13a25a46918b94fa62c27ae1a3641d582d15f33071e23b68a7f058
Content notes
- Historical recollection
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.