Linch-Pin
Dreamed c.1895? by George Stevens
This account is from Chapter XIX of Recollections of a Bookman, 1933, by Alfred A. Stevens.
There are few clues to the date, so my guess may well be off by up to a decade.
My grandfather, George Stevens, who lived at Cannington in the County of Somerset, was a very light sleeper; a gentle touch would usually awake him. Usually his nights would not consist of more than four or five hours of sleep. He would consequently often get up in the middle of the night, make his way down to the bottom of his beloved country garden, and rest on a favorite seat under the old tree. There, with the stars for company, he would enjoy a quiet smoke of his pipe and the fragrance of Mother Earth. He was a real open-air man of the country -- born and bred.
One morning, however, to the great surprise of his family, he was still sleeping at, what was for him, a comparatively late hour. Efforts were made to arouse him, as he had an appointment which was nearly due, but these, to the alarm of the household, were for quite a time completely unsuccessful. At last he came gradually to, as though from a deep trance, and remarked that he had had a curious dream.
He had dreamt that he saw Mr. A --, whom he knew, sitting on the side of a cart which was coming along the neighboring road. Suddenly he saw the man fall off, and then perceived the wheel of the vehicle was resting on his body. Some men rushed to his assistance and were frantically endeavoring to lift the cart off the man. My grandfather in his dream called out loudly to the man to pull out the linch-pin (the steel pin which went through the axle to keep the wheel on), but they did not seem to hear him. Then the vision faded away, after the fashion of a dissolving view.During breakfast several friends ran out to the house to tell him that a serious accident had just happened, and related the particulars, which proved to be exactly as grandfather had seen them in his dream, even to the identity of the victim. The man had, I think, died in the meantime.
...Scientists may, some day, think it worthwhile to approach the subject of psychic phenomena just as they do in the case of any other branch of their investigations and excursions into the unknown, unhampered by any sort of a priori judgments or predilections. We cannot have God on our own terms.
--Alfred A. Stevens
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