earlier version the obvious blanks after the word “steamer” in the above text were filled up as follows: “We got up. Soon we felt cold. An old man gave us a blouse which the teacher put on.” On the other hand, there was an omission of the passage about finding no room in the hotel, and being obliged to pass the night in the barn.
The child told the dream immediately, not only to her three friends but also to her mother. The mother repeated it to me with only trifling differences from the two versions given above. The teacher, in his further investigations, carried out with deepest misgivings, failed, like myself, to get indications of any more dangerous material. There is therefore a strong probability that the original recital could not have run very differently. (The passage about the cold and the blouse seems to be an early interpolation, for it is an attempt to supply a logical relationship. Coming out of the water one is wet, has on only a bathing dress, and is therefore unable to take part in a wedding before putting on some clothes.) At first, of course, the teacher would not allow that the whole affair had arisen only out of a dream. He rather suspected it to be an invention. He was, however, obliged to admit that the innocent telling of the dream was apparently a fact, and that it was unnatural to regard the child as capable of such guile as to indicate some sexual equivocation in this disguised form. For a time he wavered between the view that it was a question of cunning invention, and the view that it was really a question of a dream, innocent in itself, which had been understood by the other children in a sexual way. When his first indignation wore off he concluded that Marie X.’s guilt could not be so great, and that her phantasies and those of her companions had contributed to the rumour. He then did something really valuable. He placed Marie’s companions under supervision, and made them all write out what they had heard of the dream.
Before turning our attention to this, let us cast a glance at the dream analytically. In the first place, we must accept the facts and agree with the teacher that we have to do with
