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AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME BY J. W. DUNNE [SECOND EDITION]

In January of that year I was in Guy's Hospital, recovering from an operation. There, one morning, when reading a book, I came upon a reference to one of those "combination" locks which are released by the twisting of rings embossed with letters of the alphabet. As I read this, something seemed, for one fleeting instant, to be stirring, so to say, in my memory; but whatever it was it immediately subsided.

 I paused for a second, but nothing further developed, so I returned to my book. Then, luckily, I changed my mind, tossed the volume aside, and set myself determinedly to worry out exactly what it was that I had momentarily associated with the sentence read. In a little while it came back. I had dreamed, during the previous night, of precisely such a combination lock.

The chances of coincidence, where two such vague, commonplace events were concerned, needed no pointing out. But I could not remember having seen, heard, or thought of such a lock for a year or more. And, knowing from past happenings that my dreams did, sometimes, contain images of future experience, it seemed to me that the appearance of the lock image in the previous night's dream might have been another instance of my particular abnormality. Such a supposition might prove, at any rate, worth considering.