Welcome to Part Six of our latest audio adventure in our series Tales for Our Time: This tale is an undoubted H G Wells classic, The Time Machine. In this episode our Time Traveler is astonished to find that in the year 802,701, when a female swimmer gets into trouble, the men stand around on the bank watching her drown:
It happened that, as I was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land.
As I note in my book After America, it is, pathetically, all too common in the early 21st century for men to stand around watching women drown.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear Part Six of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here down the page and in reverse order. Thank you for all those who signed up as Founding Members of our new club. Founder Membership is now closed, but we do have Premium Membership.
Tonight, Wednesday, I'll be back on air with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, coat to coast at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific - and then back for an encore performance live at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific.
See you for Part Six of The Time Machine tomorrow.