The Time Machine - International World History Project

The Time Machinemy thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer,restrained me from going straight down the gallery andkilling the brutes I heard.‘Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, Iwent out of that gallery and into another and still largerone, which at the first glance reminded me of a militarychapel hung with tattered flags. The brown and charredrags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognizedas the decaying vestiges of books. They had long sincedropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had leftthem. But here and there were warped boards and crackedmetallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been aliterary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon thefutility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struckme with keenest force was the enormous waste of labourto which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of thePHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS and my ownseventeen papers upon physical optics.‘Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to whatmay once have been a gallery of technical chemistry. Andhere I had not a little hope of useful discoveries. Except atone end where the roof had collapsed, this gallery was wellpreserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken case. And at109 of 148