The Project Gutenberg EBook of Time Enough at Last, by Lyn Venable

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Title: Time Enough at Last

Author: Lyn Venable

Release Date: June 1, 2010 [EBook #32633]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction January 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.

_The atomic bomb meant, to most people, the end. To Henry Bemis it
meant something far different--a thing to appreciate and enjoy._

Time Enough At Last

By Lynn Venable

For a long time, Henry Bemis had had an ambition. To read a book. Not
just the title or the preface, or a page somewhere in the middle. He
wanted to read the whole thing, all the way through from beginning to
end. A simple ambition perhaps, but in the cluttered life of Henry
Bemis, an impossibility.

Henry had no time of his own. There was his wife, Agnes who owned that
part of it that his employer, Mr. Carsville, did not buy. Henry was
allowed enough to get to and from work--that in itself being quite a
concession on Agnes' part.

Also, nature had conspired against Henry by handing him with a pair of
hopelessly myopic eyes. Poor Henry literally couldn't see his hand in
front of his face. For a while, when he was very young, his parents
had thought him an idiot. When they realized it was his eyes, they got
glasses for him. He was never quite able to catch up. There was never
enough time. It looked as though Henry's ambition would never be
realized. Then something happened which changed all that.

Henry was down in the vault of the Eastside Bank & Trust when it
happened. He had stolen a few moments from the duties of his teller's
cage to try to read a few pages of the magazine he had bought that
morning. He'd made an excuse to Mr. Carsville about needing bills in
large denominations for a certain customer, and then, safe inside the
dim reces