"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 ninepins. 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 Phœnician
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-coloured 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 recognised 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 bye, 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
genuine, if uncivil, 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.