“I want to tell you a story,” said Dr. Moliere, a well known physician. “I’m not a superstitions man, nor do I believe in dreams, but for the third or fourth time in my life I was saved by a premonition. I got aboard car No. 81, on the Sutter street line, at the ferry, to ride up to my office. As usual I walked to the forward end of the car, took a seat in the corner with my back to the driver, and, pulling a paper from my pocket, was soon deeply engrossed in the news. Suddenly something said to me, ‘Go to the other end of the car.’
    “Acting on impulse I changed my seat, and so rapid were my movements that the other passengers in the car noticed them. Remember, I was sitting in the first place with my back to the driver. I was paying no attention to anything but my newspaper, and the premonition, if I may so call it, could not have come from any outside influence, such as seeing approaching danger: but, sir, I had not been in my new seat more than five seconds when the tongue of a heavy loaded wagon crushed through the side of the car just where I had been first seated, and had I not changed my seat my back would have been broken by the wagon tongue.
    “As I said,” continued the doctor “I am not superstitious, but the incident I have just related, taken in connection with other incidents of a similar nature occurring in my life, make me believe in spite of myself that there is a ‘divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.’”
    In answer to a question as to what similar warning or premonition of danger he had ever received, Dr. Moliere said: “Well, one time I was riding on the Michigan Central railroad. It was a bitter cold night, and when I entered the car my feet seemed frozen. I walked forward and took a seat near to the stove in the forward part of the car, putting my feet on the fender. In a short time a gentleman changed his seat and came and sat beside me. The train was running at a high rate of speed, and the draught soon made the heater in the car red hot. Suddenly there came to me a premonition of danger, and turning to my companion I said: ‘If we should meet with an accident, a collision, for instance, you and I would be in a bad place. We would certainly be hurled on that red hot stove.’
    “At the same instant, and before my seat mate could reply, the impulse to grasp the end of the seat came upon me , so strong I could not resist it, and hardly had my fingers closed upon the rail of the seat when there came a crash, and the car we were in was thrown violently from the track. I clung to the seat, and my companion, when thrown forward, narrowly missed the stove. My position in the seat was such that had I been pitched headlong as he was I could not have missed the heater. A broken rail caused the accident, but what caused me to grasp the seat as I did I would like to know.”—San Francisco Chronicle.

From— The Dalles Daily Chronicle. (The Dalles, Or.), 13 April 1891. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.