THE TIME MACHINE

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history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A
few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed
animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a
brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that,
because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by
which the conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then we
came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly
ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the
end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the
ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--which suggested that
originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in
my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of
big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some
still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for
mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as
for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make
only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if