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1In the Golden Age "In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He came
2straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he
3turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue. "There
4were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One
5of them addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my
6head, and, pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I felt
7other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in this
8at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence--a graceful
9gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole
10dozen of them about like ninepins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at
11the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching
12over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket. Then
13I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication. "And then, looking more nearly into their features, I
14saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to
15a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were
16singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The
17eyes were large and mild; and--this may seem egotism on my part--I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the
18interest I might have expected in them. "As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me
19smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to
20myself. Then, hesitating for a moment how to express Time, I pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure
21in chequered purple and white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder. "For a
22moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly:
23were these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see, I had always anticipated that the people
24of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then
25one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old
26children--asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended
27upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a
28moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain. "I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid
29rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing towards
30me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was received with
31melodious applause; and presently they were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me
32until I was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and
33wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything should be
34exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all
35the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I went with them the memory
36of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my
37mind. "The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the
38growing crowd of little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious. My general
39impression of the world I saw over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected and
40yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread
41of the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine them
42closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons. "The arch of the doorway
43was richly carved, but naturally I did not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions of old
44Phœnician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn. Several
45more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments,
46looking grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-coloured robes and
47shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech. "The big doorway opened into a
48proportionately great hall hung with brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with coloured
49glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white
50metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past generations,
51as to be deeply channelled along the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable tables made of
52slabs of polished stone, raised, perhaps, a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognised
53as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they were strange. "Between the tables was
54scattered a great number of cushions. Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise. With a
55pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into
56the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their example, for I felt thirsty and hungry.
57As I did so I surveyed the hall at my leisure. "And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look. The
58stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains that
59hung across the lower end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the marble table near me was
60fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of hundred
61people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with interest,
62their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same soft, and yet strong, silky
63material. "Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote future were strict vegetarians, and while I
64was with them, in spite of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found afterwards that horses,
65cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful; one, in
66particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk--was especially
67good, and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw, but
68later I began to perceive their import. "However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. So soon
69as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of
70mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of
71these up I began a series of interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty in conveying my
72meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired
73little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the business at great
74length to each other, and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense
75amount of genuine, if uncivil, amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and
76presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even
77the verb 'to eat.' But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations,
78so I determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined. And very
79little doses I found they were before long, for I never met people more indolent or more easily fatigued.
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