Time Travel

One Thursday evening, four or five men assembled for dinner at a friend's home near London. But as the evening passed, their host failed to appear. Finally, at half past seven the guests agreed it was a pity to spoil a good dinner and seated themselves to a delicious meal. The main topic of their conversation was time travel, a subject their host had seriously argued as a valid theory during an earlier dinner. He had gone so far as to show them the model of a curious machine he had built, which, he declared, could travel through the fourth dimension - time.

While the guests conversed, the door suddenly opened and in limped their host. He was in a state of disarray. His coat was dusty, dirty and smeared with green; his hair was markedly grayer than the last time they had seen him, his face pale, and his expression haggard and drawn as if by intense suffering. As he stumbled back through the door in tattered, bloodstained socks, he promised his guests that be would return shortly with an explanation for his actions and appearance.

Soon after, the gentleman did reappear, and commenced with his remarkable story:

That morning, his machine at last completed, he had begun his journey through time. Increasing the angle of his levers, at first he was able to maintain a sense of time and place. His laboratory still looked the same, but slowly its image dimmed. Then, faster and faster, night followed day, until the palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous grayness. New questions sprun up in the Traveller's mind: What had happened to civilization? How had humanity changed?

Now he saw great and splendid architecture rising about him, while the surrounding expanse became a richer green, with no interruptions made by winter. The Time Traveller decided to stop.

He fell from his machine to find himself at the foot of a colossal, winged, sphinx-like figure carved out of white stone on a bronze pedestal. The huge image, outlined by earlymorning mist, made him somewhat ill at ease. Then he noticed figures approaching,- slight creatures, perhaps four feet high, very beautiful and graceful, but indescribably frail. These beings advanced toward the Time Traveller, laughing without fear, and began touching him all over. "So these are the citizens of the future," he mused. They acted like five-yearold children, and the Traveller was disappointed with their lack of intelligence and refinement.