‘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 The Time Machine
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sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my
hands from the machine. The Time Machine
36 of 148
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 The Time Machine
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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 The Time Machine
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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 The Time Machine
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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 Time Machine
40 of 148
‘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. The Time Machine
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‘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 The Time Machine
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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 The Time Machine
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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 The Time Machine
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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 The Time Machine
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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. The Time Machine
46 of 148
‘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
