by H(erbert) G(eorge) Wells [1898]

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of

him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes

shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and

animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the

incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles

that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his

patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat

upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when

thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And

he put it to us in this way--marking the points with a lean

forefinger--as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over

this new paradox (as we thought it:) and his fecundity.

`You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one

or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry,

for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a

misconception.'

`Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?'

said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.

`I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable

ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you.

You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness

NIL, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has

a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.'

`That is all right,' said the Psychologist.

`Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube

have a real existence.'

`There I object,' said Filby. `Of course a solid body may

exist. All real things--'

`So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an

INSTANTANEOUS cube exist?'

`Don't follow you,' said Filby.

`Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real

existence?'

Filby became pensive. `Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded,

`any real body must have extension in FOUR directions: it must

have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a

natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a

moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four

dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a

fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal

distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter,

because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in

one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of

our lives.'

`That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to

relight his cigar over the lamp; `that . . . very clear indeed.'

`Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively

overlooked,' continued the Time Traveller, with a slight

accession of cheerfulness. `Really this is what is meant by the

Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth

Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of

looking at Time. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TIME AND ANY OF

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF SPACE EXCEPT THAT OUR CONSCIOUSNESS MOVES

ALONG IT. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong

side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say

about this Fourth Dimension?'

`_I_ have not,' said the Provincial Mayor.

`It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it,

is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call

Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by

reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others.

But some philosophical people have been asking why THREE

dimensions particularly--why not another direction at right

angles to the other three?--and have even tried to construct a

Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding

this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago.

You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions,

we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and

similarly they think that by models of thee dimensions they could

represent one of four--if they could master the perspective of

the thing. See?'

`I think so,' murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his

brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as

one who repeats mystic words. `Yes, I think I see it now,' he

said after some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.

`Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this

geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results

are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight

years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at

twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it

were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned

being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

`Scientific people,' proceeded the Time Traveller, after the

pause required for the proper assimilation of this, `know very

well that Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular

scientific diagram, a weather record. This line I trace with my

finger shows the movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so

high, yesterday night it fell, then this morning it rose again,

and so gently upward to here. Surely the mercury did not trace

this line in any of the dimensions of Space generally recognized?

But certainly it traced such a line, and that line, therefore,

we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension.'

`But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the

fire, `if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is

it, and why has it always been, regarded as something different?

And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other

dimensions of Space?'

The Time Traveller smiled. `Are you sure we can move freely in

Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely

enough, and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in

two dimensions. But how about up and down? Gravitation limits

us there.'

`Not exactly,' said the Medical Man. `There are balloons.'

`But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the

inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical

movement.' `Still they could move a little up and down,' said

the Medical Man.

`Easier, far easier down than up.'

`And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from

the present moment.'

`My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just

where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away

from the present movement. Our mental existences, which are

immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the

Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the

grave. Just as we should travel DOWN if we began our existence

fifty miles above the earth's surface.'

`But the great difficulty is this,' interrupted the

Psychologist. `You CAN move about in all directions of Space,

but you cannot move about in Time.'

`That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to

say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am

recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of

its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back

for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any

length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of

staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better

off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against

gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that

ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along

the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?'

`Oh, THIS,' began Filby, `is all--'

`Why not?' said the Time Traveller.

`It's against reason,' said Filby.

`What reason?' said the Time Traveller.

`You can show black is white by argument,' said Filby, `but you

will never convince me.'

`Possibly not,' said the Time Traveller. `But now you begin to

see the object of my investigations into the geometry of Four

Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine--'

`To travel through Time!' exclaimed the Very Young Man.

`That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and

Time, as the driver determines.'

Filby contented himself with laughter.

`But I have experimental verification,' said the Time

Traveller.

`It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,' the

Psychologist suggested. `One might travel back and verify the

accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!'

`Don't you think you would attract attention?' said the Medical

Man. `Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.'

`One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and

Plato,' the Very Young Man thought.

`In which case they would certainly plough you for the

Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.'

`Then there is the future,' said the Very Young Man. `Just

think! One might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate

at interest, and hurry on ahead!'

`To discover a society,' said I, `erected on a strictly

communistic basis.'

`Of all the wild extravagant theories!' began the Psychologist.

`Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until--'

`Experimental verification!' cried I. `You are going to verify

THAT?'

`The experiment!' cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.

`Let's see your experiment anyhow,' said the Psychologist,

`though it's all humbug, you know.'

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling

faintly, and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he

walked slowly out of the room, and we heard his slippers

shuffling down the long passage to his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. `I wonder what he's got?'

`Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,' said the Medical Man,

and Filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at

Burslem; but before he had finished his preface the Time

Traveller came back, and Filby's anecdote collapsed.

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering

metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very

delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent

crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that

follows--unless his explanation is to be accepted--is an

absolutely unaccountable thing. He took one of the small

octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it

in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearthrug. On this

table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a chair, and sat

down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded

lamp, the bright light of which fell upon the model. There were

also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks

upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that the room was

brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair nearest the

fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost between the Time

Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking over

his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched

him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left.

The Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on

the alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick,

however subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have

been played upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism.

`Well?' said the Psychologist.

`This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his

elbows upon the table and pressing his hands together above the

apparatus, `is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to

travel through time. You will notice that it looks singularly

askew, and that there is an odd twinkling appearance about this

bar, as though it was in some way unreal.' He pointed to the

part with his finger. `Also, here is one little white lever, and

here is another.'

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the

thing. `It's beautifully made,' he said.

`It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller.

Then, when we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he

said: `Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever,

being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future,

and this other reverses the motion. This saddle represents the

seat of a time traveller. Presently I am going to press the

lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into

future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the thing. Look

at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. I

don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack.'

There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed

about to speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time

Traveller put forth his finger towards the lever. `No,' he said

suddenly. `Lend me your hand.' And turning to the Psychologist,

he took that individual's hand in his own and told him to put out

his forefinger. So that it was the Psychologist himself who sent

forth the model Time Machine on its interminable voyage. We all

saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain there was no

trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped.

One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little

machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a

ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering

brass and ivory; and it was gone--vanished! Save for the lamp

the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was

damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked

under the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully.

`Well?' he said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then,

getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with

his back to us began to fill his pipe.

We stared at each other. `Look here,' said the Medical Man,

`are you in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that

that machine has travelled into time?'

`Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill

at the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the

Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not

unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.)

`What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'--he

indicated the laboratory--`and when that is put together I mean

to have a journey on my own account.'

`You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the

future?' said Filby.

`Into the future or the past--I don't, for certain, know

which.'

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. `It

must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said.

`Why?' said the Time Traveller.

`Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it

travelled into the future it would still be here all this time,

since it must have travelled through this time.'

`But,' I said, `If it travelled into the past it would have

been visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday

when we were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!'

`Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an

air of impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

`Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist:

`You think. You can explain that. It's presentation below the

threshold, you know, diluted presentation.'

`Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us. `That's

a simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It's

plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see

it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the

spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air.

If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times

faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get

through a second, the impression it creates will of course be

only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it

were not travelling in time. That's plain enough.' He passed

his hand through the space in which the machine had been. `You

see?' he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then

the Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

`It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man;

'but wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the

morning.'

`Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time

Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led

the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I

remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in

silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him,

puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we

beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen

vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of

ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock

crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted

crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets

of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz

it seemed to be.

`Look here,' said the Medical Man, `are you perfectly serious?

Or is this a trick--like that ghost you showed us last

Christmas?'

`Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp

aloft, `I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never

more serious in my life.'

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and

he winked at me solemnly.

II

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the

Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those

men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you

saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some

ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown

the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words,

we should have shown HIM far less scepticism. For we should

have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand

Filby. But the Time Traveller had more than a touch of whim

among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would

have made the frame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his

hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious

people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his

deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their

reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery

with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very much

about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and

the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of

our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical

incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of

utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was

particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. That I

remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at

the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar thing at

Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out

of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond--I suppose I was

one of the Time Traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving

late, found four or five men already assembled in his

drawing-room. The Medical Man was standing before the fire with

a sheet of paper in one hand and his watch in the other. I

looked round for the Time Traveller, and--`It's half-past seven

now,' said the Medical Man. `I suppose we'd better have dinner?'

`Where's----?' said I, naming our host.

`You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably

detained. He asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at

seven if he's not back. Says he'll explain when he comes.'

`It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said the Editor of

a well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and

myself who had attended the previous dinner. The other men were

Blank, the Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and

another--a quiet, shy man with a beard--whom I didn't know,

and who, as far as my observation went, never opened his mouth

all the evening. There was some speculation at the dinner-table

about the Time Traveller's absence, and I suggested time

travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that

explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden

account of the `ingenious paradox and trick' we had witnessed

that day week. He was in the midst of his exposition when the

door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. I was

facing the door, and saw it first. `Hallo!' I said. `At last!'

And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before

us. I gave a cry of surprise. `Good heavens! man, what's the

matter?' cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And the whole

tableful turned towards the door.

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty,

and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and

as it seemed to me greyer--either with dust and dirt or because

its colour had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his

chin had a brown cut on it--a cut half healed; his expression

was haggard and drawn, as by intense suffering. For a moment he

hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been dazzled by the light.

Then he came into the room. He walked with just such a limp as

I have seen in footsore tramps. We stared at him in silence,

expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made

a motion towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of

champagne, and pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it

seemed to do him good: for he looked round the table, and the

ghost of his old smile flickered across his face. `What on earth

have you been up to, man?' said the Doctor. The Time Traveller

did not seem to hear. `Don't let me disturb you,' he said, with

a certain faltering articulation. `I'm all right.' He stopped,

held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught.

`That's good,' he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint

colour came into his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces

with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm and

comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling

his way among his words. `I'm going to wash and dress, and then

I'll come down and explain things. . . Save me some of that

mutton. I'm starving for a bit of meat.'

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and

hoped he was all right. The Editor began a question. `Tell you

presently,' said the Time Traveller. `I'm--funny! Be all

right in a minute.'

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door.

Again I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his

footfall, and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went

out. He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered blood-stained

socks. Then the door closed upon him. I had half a mind to

follow, till I remembered how he detested any fuss about himself.

For a minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-gathering. Then,

'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the

Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this

brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.

`What's the game?' said the Journalist. `Has he been doing

the Amateur Cadger? I don't follow.' I met the eye of the

Psychologist, and read my own interpretation in his face. I

thought of the Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I

don't think any one else had noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the

Medical Man, who rang the bell--the Time Traveller hated to

have servants waiting at dinner--for a hot plate. At that the

Editor turned to his knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent

Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed. Conversation was

exclamatory for a little while, with gaps of wonderment; and then

the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. `Does our friend eke

out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his

Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired. `I feel assured it's this

business of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up the

Psychologist's account of our previous meeting. The new guests

were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. `What

WAS this time travelling? A man couldn't cover himself with

dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?' And then, as the idea

came home to him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn't they any

clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist too, would not

believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work of

heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They were both the new kind

of journalist--very joyous, irreverent young men. `Our Special

Correspondent in the Day after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist

was saying--or rather shouting--when the Time Traveller came

back. He was dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing

save his haggard look remained of the change that had startled

me.

`I say,' said the Editor hilariously, `these chaps here say

you have been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us

all about little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the

lot?'

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without

a word. He smiled quietly, in his old way. `Where's my mutton?'

he said. `What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'

`Story!' cried the Editor.

`Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller. `I want something

to eat. I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my

arteries. Thanks. And the salt.'

`One word,' said I. `Have you been time travelling?'

`Yes,' said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding

his head.

`I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the

Editor. The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent

Man and rang it with his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who

had been staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured

him wine. The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own

part, sudden questions kept on rising to my lips, and I dare say

it was the same with the others. The Journalist tried to relieve

the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The Time

Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the

appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and

watched the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man

seemed even more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with

regularity and determination out of sheer nervousness. At last

the Time Traveller pushed his plate away, and looked round us.

`I suppose I must apologize,' he said. `I was simply starving.

I've had a most amazing time.' He reached out his hand for a

cigar, and cut the end. `But come into the smoking-room. It's

too long a story to tell over greasy plates.' And ringing the

bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.

`You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?'

he said to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the

three new guests.

`But the thing's a mere paradox,' said the Editor.

`I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story,

but I can't argue. I will,' he went on, `tell you the story of

what has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from

interruptions. I want to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound

like lying. So be it! It's true--every word of it, all the

same. I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then . .

. I've lived eight days . . . such days as no human being ever

lived before! I'm nearly worn out, but I shan't sleep till I've

told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no

interruptions! Is it agreed?'

`Agreed,' said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed `Agreed.'

And with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set

it forth. He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a

weary man. Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down

I feel with only too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink

--and, above all, my own inadequacy--to express its quality.

You read, I will suppose, attentively enough; but you cannot see

the speaker's white, sincere face in the bright circle of the

little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot

know how his expression followed the turns of his story! Most of

us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the smoking-room

had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist and the

legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were illuminated.

At first we glanced now and again at each other. After a time we

ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller's face.

III

`I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the

Time Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete

in the workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly;

and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but

the rest of it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on

Friday, but on Friday, when the putting together was nearly done,

I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too

short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing was not

complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to-day that

the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a

last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on

the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a

suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same

wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the

starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,

pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed

to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking

round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything

happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked

me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it

had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past

three!

`I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever

with both hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got

hazy and went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently

without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took

her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to

shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to

its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a

lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The laboratory grew

faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night

came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and

faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange,

dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

`I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time

travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling

exactly like that one has upon a switchback--of a helpless

headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of

an imminent smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the

flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory

seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping

swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute

marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and

I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of

scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of

any moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by

too fast for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light

was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent

darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters

from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars.

Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation

of night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky

took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous color

like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of

fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating

band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a

brighter circle flickering in the blue.

`The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the

hill-side upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose

above me grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like

puffs of vapour, now brown, now green; they grew, spread,

shivered, and passed away. I saw huge buildings rise up faint

and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface of the earth

seemed changed--melting and flowing under my eyes. The little

hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster

and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and

down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that

consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by

minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and

was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

`The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant

now. They merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration.

I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I

was unable to account. But my mind was too confused to attend to

it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself

into futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce

thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently a

fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind--a certain

curiosity and therewith a certain dread--until at last they

took complete possession of me. What strange developments of

humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary

civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look

nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated

before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising

about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and

yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer

green flow up the hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry

intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth

seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of

stopping,

`The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some

substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So

long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this

scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping

like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances!

But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by

molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms

into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a

profound chemical reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion

--would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all

possible dimensions--into the Unknown. This possibility had

occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine;

but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk--

one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the risk was

inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light. The

fact is that insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything,

the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the

feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I

told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance

I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged

over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over,

and I was flung headlong through the air.

`There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may

have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing

round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset

machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked

that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was

on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by

rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple

blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the

hail-stones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over

the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment

I was wet to the skin. "Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who

has travelled innumerable years to see you."

`Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up

and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in

some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons

through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world was

invisible.

`My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of

hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It

was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It

was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but

the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were

spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to

me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that

the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me;

there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was

greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion

of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space--half a

minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to

recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I

tore my eyes from it for a moment and saw that the hail curtain

had worn threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the

promise of the Sun.

`I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full

temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear

when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not

have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common

passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its

manliness and had developed into something inhuman,

unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some

old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting

for our common likeness--a foul creature to be incontinently

slain.

`Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with

intricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side

dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was

seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time

Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the shafts

of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey downpour was

swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost.

Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown

shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings

about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of

the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted

hailstones piled along their courses. I felt naked in a strange

world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air,

knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear grew to

frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again

grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave

under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin

violently. One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I

stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again.

`But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage

recovered. I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this

world of the remote future. In a circular opening, high up in

the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of figures clad in

rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were directed

towards me.

`Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the

bushes by the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men

running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to

the little lawn upon which I stood with my machine. He was a

slight creature--perhaps four feet high--clad in a purple

tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or

buskins--I could not clearly distinguish which--were on his

feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare.

Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.

`He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature,

but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the

more beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic beauty of which

we used to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained

confidence. I took my hands from the machine.

IV

`In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this

fragile thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and

laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign

of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two others who

were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet

and liquid tongue.

`There were others coming, and presently a little group of

perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me.

One of them addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough,

that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my

head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step

forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I felt other

soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to

make sure I was real. There was nothing in this at all alarming.

Indeed, there was something in these pretty little people that

inspired confidence--a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike

ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy

myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like nine-pins.

But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little

pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it

was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto forgotten,

and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little

levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket.

Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of

communication.

`And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some

further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness.

Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the

neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on

the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were

small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins

ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and--this may

seem egotism on my part--I fancied even that there was a

certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.

`As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply

stood round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each

other, I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine

and to myself. Then hesitating for a moment how to express time,

I pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in

chequered purple and white followed my gesture, and then

astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.

`For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his

gesture was plain enough. The question had come into my mind

abruptly: were these creatures fools? You may hardly understand

how it took me. You see I had always anticipated that the people

of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be

incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then

one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on

the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children--

asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm!

It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes,

their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of

disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I

had built the Time Machine in vain.

`I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid

rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a

pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me,

carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and

put it about my neck. The idea was received with melodious

applause; and presently they were all running to and fro for

flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was almost

smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can

scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless

years of culture had created. Then someone suggested that their

plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I

was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to

watch me all the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a

vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I went with them the

memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and

intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my

mind.

`The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal

dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd

of little people, and with the big open portals that yawned

before me shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the

world I saw over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful

bushes and flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless garden. I

saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a

foot perhaps across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew

scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I

say, I did not examine them closely at this time. The Time

Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.

`The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I

did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw

suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through,

and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-

worn. Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway,

and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century

garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and

surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and

shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and

laughing speech.

`The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung

with brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially

glazed with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a

tempered light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some

very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was

so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past

generations, as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented

ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of

slabs of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor,

and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognized as a kind

of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they

were strange.

`Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions.

Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do

likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat

the fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so

forth, into the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was

not loath to follow their example, for I felt thirsty and hungry.

As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure.

`And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated

look. The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a

geometrical pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains

that hung across the lower end were thick with dust. And it

caught my eye that the corner of the marble table near me was

fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect was extremely rich

and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of hundred people

dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to me as

they could come, were watching me with interest, their little

eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in

the same soft and yet strong, silky material.

`Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the

remote future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them,

in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also.

Indeed, I found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had

followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were

very delightful; one, in particular, that seemed to be in season

all the time I was there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk

--was especially good, and I made it my staple. At first I was

puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers I

saw, but later I began to perceive their import.

`However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant

future now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I

determined to make a resolute attempt to learn the speech of

these new men of mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do.

The fruits seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding

one of these up I began a series of interrogative sounds and

gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my

meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or

inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired little

creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They

had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each

other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds

of their language caused an immense amount of amusement.

However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and

persisted, and presently I had a score of noun substantives at

least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns,

and even the verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little

people soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations,

so I determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their

lessons in little doses when they felt inclined. And very little

doses I found they were before long, for I never met people more

indolent or more easily fatigued.

`A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and

that was their lack of interest. They would come to me with

eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children

they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some

other toy. The dinner and my conversational beginnings ended, I

noted for the first time that almost all those who had surrounded

me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how speedily I came to

disregard these little people. I went out through the portal

into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was satisfied.

I was continually meeting more of these men of the future, who

would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me,

and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me

again to my own devices.

`The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the

great hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting

sun. At first things were very confusing. Everything was so

entirely different from the world I had known--even the

flowers. The big building I had left was situated on the slope

of a broad river valley, but the Thames had shifted perhaps a

mile from its present position. I resolved to mount to the

summit of a crest perhaps a mile and a half away, from which I

could get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight

Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. For that, I

should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine

recorded.

`As I walked I was watching for every impression that could

possibly help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in

which I found the world--for ruinous it was. A little way up

the hill, for instance, was a great heap of granite, bound

together by masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous

walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very

beautiful pagoda-like plants--nettles possibly--but wonderfully

tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of stinging.

It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure, to

what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was

destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience--the

first intimation of a still stranger discovery--but of that I

will speak in its proper place.

`Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which

I rested for a while, I realized that there were no small houses

to be seen. Apparently the single house, and possibly even the

household, had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were

palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form

such characteristic features of our own English landscape, had

disappeared.

`"Communism," said I to myself.

`And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at

the half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a

flash, I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the

same soft hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of

limb. It may seem strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this

before. But everything was so strange. Now, I saw the fact

plainly enough. In costume, and in all the differences of

texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other,

these people of the future were alike. And the children seemed

to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged,

then, that the children of that time were extremely precocious,

physically at least, and I found afterwards abundant verification

of my opinion.

`Seeing the ease and security in which these people were

living, I felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after

all what one would expect; for the strength of a man and the

softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the

differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of

an age of physical force; where population is balanced and

abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a

blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and

off-spring are secure, there is less necessity--indeed there is

no necessity--for an efficient family, and the specialization

of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears.

We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this

future age it was complete. This, I must remind you, was my

speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how far it

fell short of the reality.

`While I was musing upon these things, my attention was

attracted by a pretty little structure, like a well under a

cupola. I thought in a transitory way of the oddness of wells

still existing, and then resumed the thread of my speculations.

There were no large buildings towards the top of the hill, and as

my walking powers were evidently miraculous, I was presently left

alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and

adventure I pushed on up to the crest.

`There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not

recognize, corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and

half smothered in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into

the resemblance of griffins' heads. I sat down on it, and I

surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that

long day. It was as sweet and fair a view as I have ever seen.

The sun had already gone below the horizon and the west was

flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple and

crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the river

lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the

great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in

ruins and some still occupied. Here and there rose a white or

silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and there

came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There

were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of

agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.

`So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things

I had seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my

interpretation was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I

had got only a half-truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of

the truth.)

`It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the

wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind.

For the first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the

social effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come

to think, it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the

outcome of need; security sets a premium on feebleness. The work

of ameliorating the conditions of life--the true civilizing

process that makes life more and more secure--had gone steadily

on to a climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had

followed another. Things that are now mere dreams had become

projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the

harvest was what I saw!

`After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are

still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has

attacked but a little department of the field of human disease,

but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and

persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed

just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of

wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a

balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals

--and how few they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a

new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and

larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve

them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and

our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and

slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better

organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in

spite of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent,

educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster

towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and

carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable

me to suit our human needs.

`This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well;

done indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my

machine had leaped. The air was free from gnats, the earth from

weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful

flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The

ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been

stamped out. I saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during

all my stay. And I shall have to tell you later that even the

processes of putrefaction and decay had been profoundly affected

by these changes.

`Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind

housed in splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had

found them engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle,

neither social nor economical struggle. The shop, the

advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the

body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that golden

evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. The

difficulty of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and

population had ceased to increase.

`But with this change in condition comes inevitably

adaptations to the change. What, unless biological science is a

mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour?

Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong,

and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that

put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon

self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of

the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce

jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion,

all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers

of the young. NOW, where are these imminent dangers? There is

a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against connubial

jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts;

unnecessary things now, and things that make us uncomfortable,

savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life.

`I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their

lack of intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it

strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For

after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity had been strong,

energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant

vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now

came the reaction of the altered conditions.

`Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security,

that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become

weakness. Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires,

once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure.

Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no

great help--may even be hindrances--to a civilized man. And

in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual

as well as physical, would be out of place. For countless years

I judged there had been no danger of war or solitary violence, no

danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to require strength

of constitution, no need of toil. For such a life, what we

should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are

indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are, for the

strong would be fretted by an energy for which there was no

outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was

the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy of

mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the

conditions under which it lived--the flourish of that triumph

which began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of

energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then

come languor and decay.

`Even this artistic impetus would at last die away--had

almost died in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers,

to dance, to sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the

artistic spirit, and no more. Even that would fade in the end

into a contented inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone

of pain and necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that

hateful grindstone broken at last!

`As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this

simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world--

mastered the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly

the checks they had devised for the increase of population had

succeeded too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than

kept stationary. That would account for the abandoned ruins.

Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough--as most

wrong theories are!

V

`As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man,

the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of

silver light in the north-east. The bright little figures ceased

to move about below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered

with the chill of the night. I determined to descend and find

where I could sleep.

`I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled

along to the figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of

bronze, growing distinct as the light of the rising moon grew

brighter. I could see the silver birch against it. There was

the tangle of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light, and

there was the little lawn. I looked at the lawn again. A queer

doubt chilled my complacency. "No," said I stoutly to myself,

"that was not the lawn."

`But it WAS the lawn. For the white leprous face of the

sphinx was towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as this

conviction came home to me? But you cannot. The Time Machine

was gone!

`At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of

losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new

world. The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation.

I could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. In

another moment I was in a passion of fear and running with great

leaping strides down the slope. Once I fell headlong and cut my

face; I lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and

ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time

I ran I was saying to myself: "They have moved it a little,

pushed it under the bushes out of the way." Nevertheless, I ran

with all my might. All the time, with the certainty that

sometimes comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance

was folly, knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of

my reach. My breath came with pain. I suppose I covered the

whole distance from the hill crest to the little lawn, two miles

perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a young man. I cursed

aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine,

wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and none answered.

Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world.

`When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a

trace of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I

faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran

round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner,

and