The Time Machine

I Introduction II The Machine III The Time Traveller Returns IV Time Travelling V In the Golden Age...

The Time Traveller for so it will be convenient to speak of him was expounding a recondite matter...

I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit...

Filby became pensive. Clearly, the Time Traveller proceeded, any real body must have extension in...

Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked, continued the Time Traveller,...

It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three...

I think so, murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an introspective...

Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry of Four Dimensions for some...

Scientific people, proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause required for the proper...

But, said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, if Time is really only a fourth...

The Time Traveller smiled. Are you so sure we can move freely in Space. Right and left we can go,...

My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong....

That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time....

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands deep in his...

Some sleight of hand trick or other, said the Medical Man, and Filby tried to tell us about a...

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic framework, scarcely larger...

This little affair, said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon the table and pressing his...

It took two years to make, retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we had all imitated the action...

There was a minutes pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to speak to me, but changed his...

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under the table. At that the Time...

Certainly, said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire. Then he turned, lighting...

Of course, said the Psychologist, and reassured us. Thats a simple point of psychology. I should...

Would you like to see the Time Machine itself. asked the Time Traveller. And therewith, taking the...

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time...

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond I suppose I was one of the Time Travellers most constant...

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who had attended the previous...

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves;...

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion towards the wine. The Editor...

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I remarked his lameness and the...

Whats the game. said the Journalist. Has he been doing the Amateur Cadger. I dont follow. I met the...

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man, who rang the bell the Time...

Id give a shilling a line for a verbatim note, said the Editor. The Time Traveller pushed his glass...

I cant argue tonight. I dont mind telling you the story, but I cant argue. I will, he went on, tell...

Agreed, said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed Agreed. And with that the Time Traveller began...

I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed you the actual...

I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a...

I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively...

The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon which this house now stands,...

The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They merged at last into a kind of...

The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the...

There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been stunned for a moment. A...

Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A colossal...

My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white...

I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly...

Already I saw other vast shapes huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns, with a...

But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I looked more curiously and less...

Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the White Sphinx were the heads...

He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. His flushed...

In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He came...

There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite...

And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their...

As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and speaking in...

For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The question had...

I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as startled...

The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions. I was naturally most...

The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving very...

The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with brown. The roof was in shadow,...

Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these my conductors seated...

And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. The stained glass windows,...

Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote future were strict vegetarians,...

However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. So soon as my appetite was...

A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was their lack of interest. They...

The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great hall, and the scene was lit by...

As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly help to explain the condition...

Looking round, with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested for a while, I realised that...

And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the half dozen little figures that were...

Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt that this close resemblance...

While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a pretty little structure, like...

There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognise, corroded in places with a kind...

So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had seen, and as it shaped itself...

It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset set me thinking...

After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage. The...

This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done indeed for all Time, in the space...

Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in splendid shelters, gloriously...

But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change. What, unless...

I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of intelligence, and those big...

Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is...

Even this artistic impetus would at last die away had almost died in the Time I saw. To adorn...

As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple explanation I had mastered the...

As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous,...

I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the figure of the White Sphinx...

At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left...

When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realised. Not a trace of the thing was to be seen. I...

I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter...

I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit...

There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which, perhaps, a score or so of the...

Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and knocking one of the people over in my course, went...

I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had got there, and why I had...

But probably the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be calm and patient, find its...

I saw the heads of two orange clad people coming through the bushes and under some blossom covered...

But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels. I thought I heard something...

I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes towards the hill again....

Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people avoided me. It may have been...

So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness as the Thames valley....

After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers standing here and there upon the...

And here I must admit that I learnt very little of drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and...

In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of crematoria nor anything...

I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilisation and a...

Then, again, about the Time Machine. something, I knew not what, had taken it into the hollow...

That day, too, I made a friend of a sort. It happened that, as I was watching some of the little...

This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman, as I believe it was, as I was...

She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She tried to follow me everywhere,...

It was from her, too, that I learnt that fear had not yet left the world. She was fearless enough...

It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me triumphed, and for five of the...

The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were mingled in a...

As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and its vivid colouring returned...

I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age. I cannot...

Well, one very hot morning my fourth, I think as I was seeking shelter from the heat and glare in a...

The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my hands and steadfastly looked...

My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull white, and had strange large...

I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for some time that I could succeed...

I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground ventilation. I began to...

They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned pillar, peering down the well....

Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was subterranean. There were three...

Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings were the...

At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me that the...

Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their...

The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape in my mind. It had been no...

Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time Machine. For I felt sure it was...

It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up the new found clue in what was...

The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little disordered. I was oppressed...

It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me farther and farther afield in my...

Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when she saw me lean over the mouth...

I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The descent was effected by means of...

I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again, and leave...

I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in the...

I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of the...

Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose out of the dimness, and cast...

I have thought since how particularly ill equipped I was for such an experience. When I had started...

I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was only with my last...

In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to...

That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly nausea...

Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto, except during my nights anguish at the...

The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon. Weena had put this into...

Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was...

I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing that commended...

Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she desired me to let...

As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest towards Wimbledon,...

So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night. The clear blue of the distance...

From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before me. I hesitated...

Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down...

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life....

Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled away the...

I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant instead of black and...

Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a...

I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue. My first was to secure some...

I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted and falling into...

The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and along the face of it I...

Within the big valves of the door which were open and broken we found, instead of the customary...

Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter day South Kensington. Here, apparently, was the...