e interfered outrageously and
enriched himself. He snipped cigarettes in two with a scissors
and blew out matches, so that one frustrated man broke down and
cried at his inability to get a light.

He removed the weapons from the holsters of policemen and put cap
pistols and water guns in their places. He unclipped the leashes
of dogs and substituted little toy dogs rolling on wheels.

He put frogs in water glasses and left lighted firecrackers on
bridge tables.

He reset wrist watches on wrists, and played pranks in men's
rooms.

"I was always a boy at heart," said Charles Vincent.

Also during those first few days of the controlled new state, he
established himself materially, acquiring wealth by devious ways,
and opening bank accounts in various cities under various names,
against a time of possible need.

Nor did he ever feel any shame for the tricks he played on
unaccelerated humanity. For the people, when he was in the state,
were as statues to him, hardly living, barely moving, unseeing,
unhearing. And it is no shame to show disrespect to such comical
statues.

And also, and again because he was a boy at heart, he had fun
with the girls.

"I am one mass of black and blue marks," said Jenny one day. "My
lips are sore and my front teeth feel loosened. I don't know what
in the world is the matter with me."

Yet he had not meant to bruise or harm her. He was rather fond of
her and he resolved to be much more careful. Yet it was fun, when
he was in the state and invisible to her because of his speed, to
kiss her here and there in out-of-the-way places. She made a
nice statue and it was good sport. And there were others.

"You look older," said one of his co-workers one day. "Are you
taking care of yourself? Are you worried?"

"I am not," said Vincent. "I never felt better or happier in my
life."

But now there was time for so many things--time, in fact, for
everything. There was no reason why he could not master anything
in the world, when he could take off for fifteen minutes and gain
fifteen hours. Vincent was a rapid but careful reader. He could
now read from a hundred and twenty to two hundred books in an
evening and night; and he slept in the accelerated state and
could get a full night's sleep in eight minutes.

He first acquired a knowledge of languages. A quite extensive
reading knowledge of a language can be acquired in three hundred
hours world time, or three hundred minutes (five hours)