Last night I had a dream which I record as a curiosity, so far as I know, in the literature of dreams. I was staying, with my sisters, in some suburb of London, and had heard that the Terrys were staying near us, so went to call, and found Mrs. Terry at home, who told us that Marion [nicknamed "Polly"] and Florence were at the theatre, 'the Walter House,' where they had a good engagement.

'In that case,' I said, 'I'll go on there at once, and see the performance -- and may I take Polly with me?'

'Certainly,' said Mrs. Terry. And there was Polly, the child, seated in the room, and looking about nine or ten years old: and I was distinctly conscious of the fact, yet without any feeling of surprise at its incongruity, that I was going to take the child Polly with me to the theatre, to see the grown-up Polly act!

Both pictures, Polly as a child, and Polly as a woman, are, I suppose, equally clear in my ordinary waking memory: and it seems that in sleep I had contrived to give the two pictures separate individualities.

From S.D. Collingwood's The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, 1899; available online through the Gutenberg Project.

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