slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained

me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I

heard.

'Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that

gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first

glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags.

The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I

presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had

long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left

them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic

clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I

might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition.

But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the

enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting

paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly

of the Philosophical Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon

physical optics.

'Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have

been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little

hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had

collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every

unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases,

I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were

perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to Weena. "Dance,"

The Time Machine