in his hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china. So I don't think any of us said very much about time traveling in the interval between that Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnæan. He said he had seen a similar thing at Tübingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing-out of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.
Page:The Time Machine (1st edition).djvu/38
This page has been validated.
26
THE TIME MACHINE.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/The_Time_Machine_%281st_edition%29.djvu/page38-1024px-The_Time_Machine_%281st_edition%29.djvu.jpg)