Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

Travelers
In
Time

Strange tales

of man
's
journeyings into the past

and the future

Edited, with an introduction by

PHILIP VAN
DOREN
STERN

Garden City,

COPYRIGHT,
1947,
BY
PHILIP VAN DÖREN STERN ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED

PRINTED
IN THE UNITED STATES AT
THE COUNTRY
LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Alice
sighed
wearily.
"I think you might do
something
better
with
the time," she said, "than
wasting
it
in asking
riddles
that
have
no answers."

"If you knew Time as well as I do,"
said the Hatter, "you
wouldn't talk
about
wasting
it.
It's
him.
...
I
dare
say
you
never
even
spoke to
Time.'"

"Perhaps
not,"
Alice
cautiously
replied;
"but
I
know
J
have
to beat
time
when
I
learn
music."

"Ah! That
accounts
for
it"
said the Hatter. "He won't stand beating. Now,
if
you only
kept
on
good
terms
with
him, he'd
do almost
anything
you
liked
with the
clock.
For
instance,
suppose
it
were
nine
o'clock
in
the
morning,
just
time
to
begin
lessons:
you'd only
have
to
whisper
a
hint
to
Time,
and
round
goes
the
clock
in
a twinkling.'
Half-past
one,
time
for
dinner.'"

"That
would
be
grand,
certainly,"
Alice
said
thoughtfully;
"but then—I
shouldn't
be
hungry
for
it,
you
know."

"Not
at
first,
perhaps,"
said
the
Hatter.
"But
you
could
keep
it to
half-past
one
as
long
as
you
liked."

"Is that the way
you
manage?"
Alice
asked.

The
Hatter shook his head
mournfully.
"Not
I.'"
he
replied.
"We quarreled
last
March.
.
.
.
And
ever
since
that,
he
won't
do
a
thing
I ask! It's
always
six
o'clock
now."

Contents

I
ntroduction
by
Philip Van Doien
Stern
                                               
xiii

THROUGH THE CLOCK

T
he
T
ime
M
achine
by
H. G. Wells
                                                                
3

"A machine that shall travel
...
in any direction of Space and Time. . .
."

E
lsewhere and
O
therwise
by Algernon Blackwood
                      
79

"I
saw him go,
I
also saw him return. . . . This was my
unsought, "unwelcome privilege."

E
noch
S
oames
by Max Beerbohm
                                                           
125

"A hundred years hence!
...
If I could come back to life then—just
for a few hours . . ."

B
etween
the
M
inute and the
H
our
by A. M. Burrage
              
153

"A moment later, and he was looking out
upon
an
altered world."

THE
SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

T
he
R
ocking-
H
orse
W
inner
by
D.
H. Lawrence
                            
169

"The voices in the house trilled and
screamed: 'There must be more money!' "

O
n the
S
tadxcase
by Katharine FuIIerton
GerouJd
                          
185

"Since the 'ghosts' we saw were not of
the past they must be of the future. . . ."

A
ugust
H
eat
by William Fryer Harvey
                                                    
209

" 'And the dates?'
'I
can only answer for one of them, and that's correct.'"

T
he
A
nticipator
by Morley
Robeits
                                                    
215

"He
received a note from the editor: 'Burford sent me a tale with the same motive
weeks ago . . ."'

T
he
O
ld
M
an
by Holloway Horn
                                                               
221

" 'Will you buy a paper? It is not an
ordinary paper, I assure you.' "

T
he
T
aipan
by W. Somerset Maugham
                                                      
229

"They could say what they liked, but he
had seen the grave."

T
he
R
ousing of
M
r.
B
radegar
by H. F. Heard
                              
237

"It seemed
...
as though you were looking down the wrong end of a
telescope."

THE
PAST REVISITED

"T
he
F
inest
S
tory
in the
W
orld
" by Rudyard Kipling
                 
249

"Looking . . . where man had never been
permitted to look with'full knowledge since Time began."

E
tched
in
M
oonlight
by
James
Stephens
                                       
277

"In an instant of that time I could have
had a dream; and . . . the adventures of twenty or forty years could take place.
. . ."

A
V
iew
from a
H
ill
by M. R.
James
                                                      
309

"Yet when I take the glass away there's
nothing."

A
F
riend
to
A
lexander
by James Thurber
                                         
327

"I've taken to dreaming about Aaron
Burr. . . ."

T
he
S
ilver
M
irror
by A. Conan Doyle
                                                  
337

".
. . that strange woolly cloud deep in the heart of the old mirror."