THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

By F Scott Fitzgerald

As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at

home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have
decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered
upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a
fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty
years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer
of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital.
Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing
history I am about to set down will never be known.

I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for
yourself.

The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and

financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the
This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner
knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage
which largely populated the Confederacy. This was their first
experience with the charming old custom of having babies--Mr.
Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so
that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, at which
institution Mr. Button himself had been known for four years
by the somewhat obvious nickname of "Cuff."

On the September morning consecrated to the enormous event he

arose nervously at six o'clock dressed himself, adjusted an
impeccable stock, and hurried forth through the streets of
Baltimore to the hospital, to determine whether the darkness
of the night had borne in new life upon its bosom.

Page 1 of 42
When he was approximately a hundred yards from the Maryland
Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene,
the family physician, descending the front steps, rubbing his
hands together with a washing movement--as all doctors are
required to do by the unwritten ethics of their profession.

Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button & Co.,

Wholesale Hardware, began to run toward Doctor Keene with much
less dignity than was expected from a Southern gentleman of
that picturesque period. "Doctor Keene!" he called. "Oh,
Doctor Keene!"

The doctor heard him, faced around, and stood waiting, a

curious expression settling on his harsh, medicinal face as
Mr. Button drew near.

"What happened?" demanded Mr. Button, as he came up in a

gasping rush. "What was it? How is she" A boy? Who is it?
What---"

"Talk sense!" said Doctor Keene sharply, He appeared somewhat

irritated.

"Is the child born?" begged Mr. Button.

Doctor Keene frowned. "Why, yes, I suppose so--after a

fashion." Again he threw a curious glance at Mr. Button.

"Is my wife all right?"

"Yes."

"Is it a boy or a girl?"

Page 2 of 42
"Here now!" cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion of
irritation," I'll ask you to go and see for yourself.
Outrageous!" He snapped the last word out in almost one
syllable, then he turned away muttering: "Do you imagine a
case like this will help my professional reputation? One more
would ruin me--ruin anybody."

"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Button appalled. "Triplets?"

"No, not triplets!" answered the doctor cuttingly. "What's

more, you can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor.
I brought you into the world, young man, and I've been
physician to your family for forty years, but I'm through with
you! I don't want to see you or any of your relatives ever
again! Good-bye!"

Then he turned sharply, and without another word climbed into

his phaeton, which was waiting at the curbstone, and drove
severely away.

Mr. Button stood there upon the sidewalk, stupefied and

trembling from head to foot. What horrible mishap had
occurred? He had suddenly lost all desire to go into the
Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen--it was
with the greatest difficulty that, a moment later, he forced
himself to mount the steps and enter the front door.

A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque gloom of the

hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button approached her.

"Good-morning," she remarked, looking up at him pleasantly.

"Good-morning. I--I am Mr. Button."

Page 3 of 42
At this a look of utter terror spread itself over girl's face.
She rose to her feet and seemed about to fly from the hall,
restraining herself only with the most apparent difficulty.

"I want to see my child," said Mr. Button.

The nurse gave a little scream. "Oh--of course!" she cried

hysterically. "Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go--_up!_"

She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button, bathed in cool

perspiration, turned falteringly, and began to mount to the
second floor. In the upper hall he addressed another nurse who
approached him, basin in hand. "I'm Mr. Button," he managed to
articulate. "I want to see my----"

Clank! The basin clattered to the floor and rolled in the

direction of the stairs. Clank! Clank! I began a methodical
decent as if sharing in the general terror which this
gentleman provoked.

"I want to see my child!" Mr. Button almost shrieked. He was

on the verge of collapse.

Clank! The basin reached the first floor. The nurse regained
control of herself, and threw Mr. Button a look of hearty
contempt.

"All _right_, Mr. Button," she agreed in a hushed voice. "Very

_well!_ But if you _knew_ what a state it's put us all in this
morning! It's perfectly outrageous! The hospital will never
have a ghost of a reputation after----"

"Hurry!" he cried hoarsely. "I can't stand this!"

Page 4 of 42
"Come this way, then, Mr. Button."

He dragged himself after her. At the end of a long hall they

reached a room from which proceeded a variety of howls--
indeed, a room which, in later parlance, would have been known
as the "crying-room." They entered.

"Well," gasped Mr. Button, "which is mine?"

"There!" said the nurse.

Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is

what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partly
crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently
about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white,
and from his chin dripped a long smoke-coloured beard, which
waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in
at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with dim, faded eyes
in which lurked a puzzled question.

"Am I mad?" thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving into

rage. "Is this some ghastly hospital joke?

"It doesn't seem like a joke to us," replied the nurse

severely. "And I don't know whether you're mad or not--but
that is most certainly your child."

The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button's forehead. He

closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There
was no mistake--he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten--
a _baby_ of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over
the sides of the crib in which it was reposing.

Page 5 of 42
The old man looked placidly from one to the other for a
moment, and then suddenly spoke in a cracked and ancient
voice. "Are you my father?" he demanded.

Mr. Button and the nurse started violently.

"Because if you are," went on the old man querulously, "I wish
you'd get me out of this place--or, at least, get them to put
a comfortable rocker in here,"

"Where in God's name did you come from? Who are you?" burst
out Mr. Button frantically.

"I can't tell you _exactly_ who I am," replied the querulous
whine, "because I've only been born a few hours--but my last
name is certainly Button."

"You lie! You're an impostor!"

The old man turned wearily to the nurse. "Nice way to welcome
a new-born child," he complained in a weak voice. "Tell him
he's wrong, why don't you?"

"You're wrong. Mr. Button," said the nurse severely. "This is

your child, and you'll have to make the best of it. We're
going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as
possible-some time to-day."

"Home?" repeated Mr. Button incredulously.

"Yes, we can't have him here. We really can't, you know?"

Page 6 of 42
"I'm right glad of it," whined the old man. "This is a fine
place to keep a youngster of quiet tastes. With all this
yelling and howling, I haven't been able to get a wink of
sleep. I asked for something to eat"--here his voice rose to a
shrill note of protest--"and they brought me a bottle of
milk!"

Mr. Button, sank down upon a chair near his son and concealed
his face in his hands. "My heavens!" he murmured, in an
ecstasy of horror. "What will people say? What must I do?"

"You'll have to take him home," insisted the nurse--

"immediately!"

A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful clarity before

the eyes of the tortured man--a picture of himself walking
through the crowded streets of the city with this appalling
apparition stalking by his side.

"I can't. I can't," he moaned.

People would stop to speak to him, and what was he going to

say? He would have to introduce this--this septuagenarian:
"This is my son, born early this morning." And then the old
man would gather his blanket around him and they would plod
on, past the bustling stores, the slave market--for a dark
instant Mr. Button wished passionately that his son was black-
-past the luxurious houses of the residential district, past
the home for the aged....

"Come! Pull yourself together," commanded the nurse.

Page 7 of 42
"See here," the old man announced suddenly, "if you think I'm
going to walk home in this blanket, you're entirely mistaken."

"Babies always have blankets."

With a malicious crackle the old man held up a small white

swaddling garment. "Look!" he quavered. "_This_ is what they
had ready for
me."

"Babies always wear those," said the nurse primly.

"Well," said the old man, "this baby's not going to wear
anything in about two minutes. This blanket itches. They might
at least have given me a sheet."

"Keep it on! Keep it on!" said Mr. Button hurriedly. He turned

to the nurse. "What'll I do?"

"Go down town and buy your son some clothes."

Mr. Button's son's voice followed him down into the: hall:
"And a cane, father. I want to have a cane."

Mr. Button banged the outer door savagely....

Page 8 of 42
2

"Good-morning," Mr. Button said nervously, to the clerk in the

Chesapeake Dry Goods Company. "I want to buy some clothes for
my child."

"How old is your child, sir?"

"About six hours," answered Mr. Button, without due

consideration.

"Babies' supply department in the rear."

"Why, I don't think--I'm not sure that's what I want. It's--

he's an unusually large-size child. Exceptionally--ah large."

"They have the largest child's sizes."

"Where is the boys' department?" inquired Mr. Button, shifting

his ground desperately. He felt that the clerk must surely
scent his shameful secret.

"Right here."

"Well----" He hesitated. The notion of dressing his son in

men's clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only
find a very large boy's suit, he might cut off that long and
awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to
conceal the worst, and to retain something of his own self-
respect--not to mention his position in Baltimore society.

But a frantic inspection of the boys' department revealed no

suits to fit the new-born Button. He blamed the store, of
course---in such cases it is the thing to blame the store.

Page 9 of 42
"How old did you say that boy of yours was?" demanded the
clerk curiously.

"He's--sixteen."

"Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you said six _hours_. You'll
find the youths' department in the next aisle."

Mr. Button turned miserably away. Then he stopped, brightened,

and pointed his finger toward a dressed dummy in the window
display. "There!" he exclaimed. "I'll take that suit, out
there on the dummy."

The clerk stared. "Why," he protested, "that's not a child's

suit. At least it _is_, but it's for fancy dress. You could
wear it yourself!"

"Wrap it up," insisted his customer nervously. "That's what I

want."

The astonished clerk obeyed.

Back at the hospital Mr. Button entered the nursery and almost
threw the package at his son. "Here's your clothes," he
snapped out.

The old man untied the package and viewed the contents with a
quizzical eye.

"They look sort of funny to me," he complained, "I don't want

to be made a monkey of--"

Page 10 of 42
"You've made a monkey of me!" retorted Mr. Button fiercely.
"Never you mind how funny you look. Put them on--or I'll--or
I'll _spank_ you." He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate
word, feeling nevertheless that it was the proper thing to
say.

"All right, father"--this with a grotesque simulation of

filial respect--"you've lived longer; you know best. Just as
you say."

As before, the sound of the word "father" caused Mr. Button to

start violently.
"And hurry."

"I'm hurrying, father."

When his son was dressed Mr. Button regarded him with
depression. The costume consisted of dotted socks, pink pants,
and a belted blouse with a wide white collar. Over the latter
waved the long whitish beard, drooping almost to the waist.
The effect was not good.

"Wait!"

Mr. Button seized a hospital shears and with three quick snaps
amputated a large section of the beard. But even with this
improvement the ensemble fell far short of perfection. The
remaining brush of scraggly hair, the watery eyes, the ancient
teeth, seemed oddly out of tone with the gaiety of the
costume. Mr. Button, however, was obdurate--he held out his
hand. "Come along!" he said sternly.

His son took the hand trustingly. "What are you going to call
me, dad?" he quavered as they walked from the nursery--"just
'baby' for a while? till you think of a better name?"

Page 11 of 42
Mr. Button grunted. "I don't know," he answered harshly. "I
think we'll call you Methuselah."

Page 12 of 42
3

Even after the new addition to the Button family had had his
hair cut short and then dyed to a sparse unnatural black, had
had his face shaved so dose that it glistened, and had been
attired in small-boy clothes made to order by a flabbergasted
tailor, it was impossible for Button to ignore the fact that
his son was a excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged
stoop, Benjamin Button--for it was by this name they called
him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah--
was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal
this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise
the fact that the eyes under--were faded and watery and tired.
In fact, the baby-nurse who had been engaged in advance left
the house after one look, in a state of considerable
indignation.

But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose. Benjamin

was a baby, and a baby he should remain. At first he declared
that if Benjamin didn't like warm milk he could go without
food altogether, but he was finally prevailed upon to allow
his son bread and butter, and even oatmeal by way of a
compromise. One day he brought home a rattle and, giving it to
Benjamin, insisted in no uncertain terms that he should "play
with it," whereupon the old man took it with--a weary
expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at
intervals throughout the day.

There can be no doubt, though, that the rattle bored him, and
that he found other and more soothing amusements when he was
left alone. For instance, Mr. Button discovered one day that
during the preceding week be had smoked more cigars than ever
before--a phenomenon, which was explained a few days later
when, entering the nursery unexpectedly, he found the room
full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty expression

Page 13 of 42
on his face, trying to conceal the butt of a dark Havana.
This, of course, called for a severe spanking, but Mr. Button
found that he could not bring himself to administer it. He
merely warned his son that he would "stunt his growth."

Nevertheless he persisted in his attitude. He brought home

lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought large
pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect the illusion
which he was creating--for himself at least--he passionately
demanded of the clerk in the toy-store whether "the paint
would come oft the pink duck if the baby put it in his mouth."
But, despite all his father's efforts, Benjamin refused to be
interested. He would steal down the back stairs and return to
the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, over
which he would pore through an afternoon, while his cotton
cows and his Noah's ark were left neglected on the floor.
Against such a stubbornness Mr. Button's efforts were of
little avail.

The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious.

What the mishap would have cost the Buttons and their kinsfolk
socially cannot be determined, for the outbreak of the Civil
War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people
who were unfailingly polite racked their brains for
compliments to give to the parents--and finally hit upon the
ingenious device of declaring that the baby resembled his
grandfather, a fact which, due to the standard state of decay
common to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and
Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's grandfather
was furiously insulted.

Page 14 of 42
Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he found it.
Several small boys were brought to see him, and he spent a
stiff-jointed afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops
and marbles--he even managed, quite accidentally, to break a
kitchen window with a stone from a sling shot, a feat which
secretly delighted his father. Thereafter Benjamin contrived
to break something every day, but he did these things only
because they were expected of him, and because he was by
nature obliging.

When his grandfather's initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin

and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another's
company. They would sit for hours, these two, so far apart in
age and experience, and, like old cronies, discuss with
tireless monotony the slow events of the day. Benjamin felt
more at ease in his grandfather's presence than in his
parents'--they seemed always somewhat in awe of him and,
despite the dictatorial authority they exercised over him,
frequently addressed him as "Mr."

He was as puzzled as any one else at the apparently advanced

age of his mind and body at birth. He read up on it in the
medical journal, but found that no such case had been
previously recorded. At his father's urging he made an honest
attempt to play with other boys, and frequently he joined in
the milder games--football shook him up too much, and he
feared that in case of a fracture his ancient bones would
refuse to knit.

Page 15 of 42
When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where he
initiated into the art of pasting green paper on orange paper,
of weaving coloured maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard
necklaces. He was inclined to drowse off to sleep in the
middle of these tasks, a habit which both irritated and
frightened his young teacher. To his relief she complained to
his parents, and he was removed from the school. The Roger
Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.

By the time he was twelve years old his parents had grown used
to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of custom that they no
longer felt that he was different from any other child--except
when some curious anomaly reminded them of the fact. But one
day a few weeks after his twelfth birthday, while looking in
the mirror, Benjamin made, or thought he made, an astonishing
discovery. Did his eyes deceive him, or had his hair turned in simile scena
the dozen years of his life from white to iron-gray under its specchio dr
concealing dye? Was the network of wrinkles on his face jeckill and mr
becoming less pronounced? Was his skin healthier and firmer, hyde
with even a touch of ruddy winter colour? He could not tell.
He knew that he no longer stooped, and that his physical
condition had improved since the early days of his life.

"Can it be----?" he thought to himself, or, rather, scarcely

dared to think.

He went to his father. "I am grown," he announced

determinedly. "I want to put on long trousers."

His father hesitated. "Well," he said finally, "I don't know.

Fourteen is the age for putting on long trousers--and you are
only twelve."

"But you'll have to admit," protested Benjamin, "that I'm big

for my age."

Page 16 of 42
His father looked at him with illusory speculation. "Oh, I'm
not so sure of that," he said. "I was as big as you when I was
twelve."

This was not true-it was all part of Roger Button's silent
agreement with himself to believe in his son's normality.

Finally a compromise was reached. Benjamin was to continue to

dye his hair. He was to make a better attempt to play with
boys of his own age. He was not to wear his spectacles or
carry a cane in the street. In return for these concessions he
was allowed his first suit of long trousers....

Page 17 of 42
4

Of the life of Benjamin Button between his twelfth and twenty-

first year I intend to say little. Suffice to record that they
were years of normal ungrowth. When Benjamin was eighteen he
was erect as a man of fifty; he had more hair and it was of a
dark gray; his step was firm, his voice had lost its cracked
quaver and descended to a healthy baritone. So his father sent
him up to Connecticut to take examinations for entrance to
Yale College. Benjamin passed his examination and became a
member of the freshman class.

On the third day following his matriculation he received a

notification from Mr. Hart, the college registrar, to call at
his office and arrange his schedule. Benjamin, glancing in the
mirror, decided that his hair needed a new application of its
brown dye, but an anxious inspection of his bureau drawer
disclosed that the dye bottle was not there. Then he
remembered--he had emptied it the day before and thrown it
away.

He was in a dilemma. He was due at the registrar's in five

minutes. There seemed to be no help for it--he must go as he
was. He did.

"Good-morning," said the registrar politely. "You've come to

inquire about your son."

"Why, as a matter of fact, my name's Button----" began

Benjamin, but Mr. Hart cut him off.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Button. I'm expecting your son
here any minute."

"That's me!" burst out Benjamin. "I'm a freshman."

Page 18 of 42
"What!"

"I'm a freshman."

"Surely you're joking."

"Not at all."

The registrar frowned and glanced at a card before him. "Why,

I have Mr. Benjamin Button's age down here as eighteen."

"That's my age," asserted Benjamin, flushing slightly.

The registrar eyed him wearily. "Now surely, Mr. Button, you
don't expect me to believe that."

Benjamin smiled wearily. "I am eighteen," he repeated.

The registrar pointed sternly to the door. "Get out," he said.

"Get out of college and get out of town. You are a dangerous
lunatic."

"I am eighteen."

Mr. Hart opened the door. "The idea!" he shouted. "A man of
your age trying to enter here as a freshman. Eighteen years
old, are you? Well, I'll give you eighteen minutes to get out
of town."

Page 19 of 42
Benjamin Button walked with dignity from the room, and half a
dozen undergraduates, who were waiting in the hall, followed
him curiously with their eyes. When he had gone a little way
he turned around, faced the infuriated registrar, who was
still standing in the door-way, and repeated in a firm voice:
"I am eighteen years old."

To a chorus of titters which went up from the group of

undergraduates,Benjamin walked away.

But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his melancholy

walk to the railroad station he found that he was being
followed by a group, then by a swarm, and finally by a dense
mass of undergraduates. The word had gone around that a
lunatic had passed the entrance examinations for Yale and
attempted to palm himself off as a youth of eighteen. A fever
of excitement permeated the college. Men ran hatless out of
classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined
the mob, professors' wives with bonnets awry and bustles out
of position, ran shouting after the procession, from which
proceeded a continual succession of remarks aimed at the
tender sensibilities of Benjamin Button.

"He must be the wandering Jew!"

"He ought to go to prep school at his age!"

"Look at the infant prodigy!" "He thought this was the old
men's home."

"Go up to Harvard!"

Benjamin increased his gait, and soon he was running. He would

show them! He _would_ go to Harvard, and then they would
regret these ill-considered taunts!

Page 20 of 42
Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his head from
the
window. "You'll regret this!" he shouted.

"Ha-ha!" the undergraduates laughed. "Ha-ha-ha!" It was the

biggest mistake that Yale College had ever made....

Page 21 of 42
5

In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he

signalized his birthday by going to work for his father in
Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was in that same
year that he began "going out socially"--that is, his father
insisted on taking him to several fashionable dances. Roger
Button was now fifty, and he and his son were more and more
companionable--in fact, since Benjamin had ceased to dye his
hair (which was still grayish) they appeared about the same
age, and could have passed for brothers.

One night in August they got into the phaeton attired in their
full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins'
country house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a
gorgeous evening. A full moon drenched the road to the
lusterless color of platinum, and late-blooming harvest
flowers breathed into the motionless air aromas that were like
low, half-heard laughter. The open country, carpeted for rods
around with bright wheat, was translucent as in the day. It
was almost impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty
of the sky--almost.

"There's a great future in the dry-goods business," Roger

Button was saying. He was not a spiritual man--his aesthetic
sense was rudimentary.

"Old fellows like me can't learn new tricks," he observed

profoundly. "It's you youngsters with energy and vitality that
have the great future before you."

Page 22 of 42
Far up the road the lights of the Shevlins' country house
drifted into view, and presently there was a sighing sound
that crept persistently toward them--it might have been the
fine plaint of violins or the rustle of the silver wheat under
the moon.

They pulled up behind a handsome brougham whose passengers

were disembarking at the door. A lady got out, then an elderly
gentleman, then another young lady, beautiful as sin. Benjamin
started; an almost chemical change seemed to dissolve and
recompose the very elements of his body. A rigour passed over
him, blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a
steady thumping in his ears. It was first love.

The girl was slender and frail, with hair that was ashen under
the moon and honey-coloured under the sputtering gas-lamps of
the porch. Over her shoulders was thrown a Spanish mantilla of
softest yellow, butterflied in black; her feet were glittering
buttons at the hem of her bustled dress.

Roger Button leaned over to his son. "That," he said, "is

young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of General Moncrief."

Benjamin nodded coldly. "Pretty little thing," he said

indifferently. But when the negro boy had led the buggy away,
he added: "Dad, you might introduce me to her."

They approached a group, of which Miss Moncrief was the

centre. Reared in the old tradition, she curtsied low before
Benjamin. Yes, he might have a dance. He thanked her and
walked away--staggered away.

The interval until the time for his turn should arrive dragged
itself out interminably. He stood close to the wall, silent,
inscrutable, watching with murderous eyes the young bloods of

Page 23 of 42
Baltimore as they eddied around Hildegarde Moncrief,
passionate admiration in their faces. How obnoxious they
seemed to Benjamin; how intolerably rosy! Their curling brown
whiskers aroused in him a feeling equivalent to indigestion.

But when his own time came, and he drifted with her out upon
the changing floor to the music of the latest waltz from
Paris, his jealousies and anxieties melted from him like a
mantle of snow. Blind with enchantment, he felt that life was
just beginning. "You and your brother got here just as we
did, didn't you?" asked Hildegarde, looking up at him with
eyes that were like bright blue enamel.

Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father's brother,

would it be best to enlighten her? He remembered his
experience at Yale, so he decided against it. It would be rude
to contradict a lady; it would be criminal to mar this
exquisite occasion with the grotesque story of his origin.
Later, perhaps. So he nodded, smiled, listened, was happy.

"I like men of your age," Hildegarde told him. "Young boys are
so idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at
college, and how much money they lose playing cards. Men of
your age know how to appreciate women."

Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal--with an

effort he choked back the impulse. "You're just the romantic
age," she continued--"fifty. Twenty-five is too wordly-wise;
thirty is apt to be pale from overwork; forty is the age of
long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is--oh,
sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the mellow age. I love
fifty."

Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed

passionately to be fifty.

Page 24 of 42
"I've always said," went on Hildegarde, "that I'd rather marry
a man of fifty and be taken care of than many a man of thirty
and take care of _him_."

For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed in a honey-

coloured mist. Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they
discovered that they were marvellously in accord on all the
questions of the day. She was to go driving with him on the
following Sunday, and then they would discuss all these
questions further. Going home in the phaeton just before the
crack of dawn, when the first bees were humming and the fading
moon glimmered in the cool dew, Benjamin knew vaguely that his
father was discussing wholesale hardware.

".... And what do you think should merit our biggest attention
after hammers and nails?" the elder Button was saying.

"Love," replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.

"Lugs?" exclaimed Roger Button, "Why, I've just covered the

question of lugs."

Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes just as the eastern sky
was suddenly cracked with light, and an oriole yawned
piercingly in the quickening trees...

Page 25 of 42
6

When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde

Moncrief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say "made
known," for General Moncrief declared he would rather fall
upon his sword than announce it), the excitement in Baltimore
society reached a feverish pitch. The almost forgotten story
of Benjamin's birth was remembered and sent out upon the winds
of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was said
that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button, that he
was his brother who had been in prison for forty years, that
he was John Wilkes Booth in disguise--and, finally, that he
had two small conical horns sprouting from his head.

The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the

case with fascinating sketches which showed the head of
Benjamin Button attached to a fish, to a snake, and, finally,
to a body of solid brass. He became known, journalistically,
as the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as is
usually the case, had a very small circulation.

However, every one agreed with General Moncrief that it was

"criminal" for a lovely girl who could have married any beau
in Baltimore to throw herself into the arms of a man who was
assuredly fifty. In vain Mr. Roger Button published Us son's
birth certificate in large type in the Baltimore _Blaze_. No
one believed it. You had only to look at Benjamin and see.

Page 26 of 42
On the part of the two people most concerned there was no
wavering. So many of the stories about her fiancé were false
that Hildegarde refused stubbornly to believe even the true
one. In vain General Moncrief pointed out to her the high
mortality among men of fifty--or, at least, among men who
looked fifty; in vain he told her of the instability of the
wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosen to marry
for mellowness, and marry she did....

Page 27 of 42
7

In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde

Moncrief were mistaken. The wholesale hardware business
prospered amazingly. In the fifteen years between Benjamin
Button's marriage in 1880 and his father's retirement in 1895,
the family fortune was doubled--and this was due largely to
the younger member of the firm. Needless to say, Baltimore
eventually received the couple to its bosom. Even old General
Moncrief became reconciled to his son-in-law when Benjamin
gave him the money to bring out his _History of the Civil War_
in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nine prominent
publishers.

In Benjamin himself fifteen years had wrought many changes. It

seemed to him that the blood flowed with new vigour through
his veins. It began to be a pleasure to rise in the morning,
to walk with an active step along the busy, sunny street, to
work untiringly with his shipments of hammers and his cargoes
of nails. It was in 1890 that he executed his famous business
coup: he brought up the suggestion that _all nails used in
nailing up the boxes in which nails are shipped are the
property of the shippee_, a proposal which became a statute,
was approved by Chief Justice Fossile, and saved Roger Button
and Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than _six hundred nails
every year_.

In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and

more attracted by the gay side of life. It was typical of his
growing enthusiasm for pleasure that he was the first man in
the city of Baltimore to own and run an automobile. Meeting
him on the street, his contemporaries would stare enviously at
the picture he made of health and vitality.

Page 28 of 42
"He seems to grow younger every year," they would remark. And
if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at
first to give a proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by
bestowing on him what amounted to adulation.

And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be

well to pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one
thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to
attract him.

At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a

son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their
marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years
passed, her honey-coloured hair became an unexciting brown,
the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap
crockery--moreover, and, most of all, she had become too
settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in
her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it
been she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners--now
conditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but
without enthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia
which comes to live with each of us one day and stays with us
to the end.

Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger. At the outbreak of the

Spanish-American War in 1898 his home had for him so little
charm that he decided to join the army. With his business
influence he obtained a commission as captain, and proved so
adaptable to the work that he was made a major, and finally a
lieutenant-colonel just in time to participate in the
celebrated charge up San Juan Hill. He was slightly wounded,
and received a medal.

Page 29 of 42
Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and excitement
of array life that he regretted to give it up, but his
business required attention, so he resigned his commission and
came home. He was met at the station by a brass band and
escorted to his house.

Page 30 of 42
8

Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on the

porch, and even as he kissed her he felt with a sinking of the
heart that these three years had taken their toll. She was a
woman of forty now, with a faint skirmish line of gray hairs
in her head. The sight depressed him.

Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar mirror--

he went closer and examined his own face with anxiety,
comparing it after a moment with a photograph of himself in
uniform taken just before the war.

"Good Lord!" he said aloud. The process was continuing. There

was no doubt of it--he looked now like a man of thirty.
Instead of being delighted, he was uneasy--he was growing
younger. He had hitherto hoped that once he reached a bodily
age equivalent to his age in years, the grotesque phenomenon
which had marked his birth would cease to function. He
shuddered. His destiny seemed to him awful, incredible.

When he came downstairs Hildegarde was waiting for him. She

appeared annoyed, and he wondered if she had at last
discovered that there was something amiss. It was with an
effort to relieve the tension between them that he broached
the matter at dinner in what he considered a delicate way.

"Well," he remarked lightly, "everybody says I look younger

than ever."

Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed. "Do you think
it's anything to boast about?"

Page 31 of 42
"I'm not boasting," he asserted uncomfortably. She sniffed
again. "The idea," she said, and after a moment: "I should
think you'd have enough pride to stop it."

"How can I?" he demanded.

"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's
a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up
your mind to be different from everybody else, I don't suppose
I can stop you, but I really don't think it's very
considerate."

"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."

"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think you don't want
to be like any one else. You always have been that way, and
you always will be. But just think how it would be if every
one else looked at things as you do--what would the world be
like?"

As this was an inane and unanswerable argument Benjamin made

no reply, and from that time on a chasm began to widen between
them. He wondered what possible fascination she had ever
exercised over him.

To add to the breach, he found, as the new century gathered

headway, that his thirst for gaiety grew stronger. Never a
party of any kind in the city of Baltimore but he was there,
dancing with the prettiest of the young married women,
chatting with the most popular of the debutantes, and finding
their company charming, while his wife, a dowager of evil
omen, sat among the chaperons, now in haughty disapproval, and
now following him with solemn, puzzled, and reproachful eyes.

Page 32 of 42
"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A young fellow that
age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years
younger than his wife." They had forgotten--as people
inevitably forget--that back in 1880 their mammas and papas
had also remarked about this same ill-matched pair.

Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by

his many new interests. He took up golf and made a great
success of it. He went in for dancing: in 1906 he was an
expert at "The Boston," and in 1908 he was considered
proficient at the "Maxine," while in 1909 his "Castle Walk"
was the envy of every young man in town.

His social activities, of course, interfered to some extent

with his business, but then he had worked hard at wholesale
hardware for twenty-five years and felt that he could soon
hand it on to his son, Roscoe, who had recently graduated from
Harvard.

He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each other.
This pleased Benjamin--he soon forgot the insidious fear which
had come over him on his return from the Spanish-American War,
and grew to take a naïve pleasure in his appearance. There was
only one fly in the delicious ointment--he hated to appear in
public with his wife. Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the
sight of her made him feel absurd....

Page 33 of 42
9

One September day in 1910--a few years after Roger Button &
Co., Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe
Button--a man, apparently about twenty years old, entered
himself as a freshman at Harvard University in Cambridge. He
did not make the mistake of announcing that he would never see
fifty again, nor did he mention the fact that his son had been
graduated from the same institution ten years before.

He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a prominent

position in the class, partly because he seemed a little older
than the other freshmen, whose average age was about eighteen.

But his success was largely due to the fact that in the
football game with Yale he played so brilliantly, with so much
dash and with such a cold, remorseless anger that he scored
seven touchdowns and fourteen field goals for Harvard, and
caused one entire eleven of Yale men to be carried singly from
the field, unconscious. He was the most celebrated man in
college.

Strange to say, in his third or junior year he was scarcely

able to "make" the team. The coaches said that he had lost
weight, and it seemed to the more observant among them that he
was not quite as tall as before. He made no touchdowns--
indeed, he was retained on the team chiefly in hope that his
enormous reputation would bring terror and disorganisation to
the Yale team.

Page 34 of 42
In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had
grown so slight and frail that one day he was taken by some
sophomores for a freshman, an incident which humiliated him
terribly. He became known as something of a prodigy--a senior
who was surely no more than sixteen--and he was often shocked
at the worldliness of some of his classmates. His studies
seemed harder to him--he felt that they were too advanced. He
had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas's, the famous
preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared for
college, and he determined after his graduation to enter
himself at St. Midas's, where the sheltered life among boys
his own size would be more congenial to him.

Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore with his

Harvard diploma in his pocket. Hildegarde was now residing in
Italy, so Benjamin went to live with his son, Roscoe. But
though he was welcomed in a general way there was obviously no
heartiness in Roscoe's feeling toward him--there was even
perceptible a tendency on his son's part to think that
Benjamin, as he moped about the house in adolescent mooniness,
was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now and prominent
in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out in
connection with his family.

Benjamin, no longer _persona grata_ with the débutantes and

younger college set, found himself left much done, except for
the companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in
the neighbourhood. His idea of going to St. Midas's school
recurred to him.

"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over and over
that I want to go to prep, school."

"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter was

distasteful to him, and he wished to avoid a discussion.

Page 35 of 42
"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll have to
enter me and take me up there."

"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His eyes

narrowed and he looked uneasily at his father. "As a matter of
fact," he added, "you'd better not go on with this business
much longer. You better pull up short. You better--you
better"--he paused and his face crimsoned as he sought for
words--"you better turn right around and start back the other
way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't funny any
longer. You--you behave yourself!"

Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.

"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors are in

the house I want you to call me 'Uncle'--not 'Roscoe,' but
'Uncle,' do you understand? It looks absurd for a boy of
fifteen to call me by my first name. Perhaps you'd better call
me 'Uncle' _all_ the time, so you'll get used to it." With a
harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away....

Page 36 of 42
10

At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered

dismally upstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had
not shaved for three months, but he could find nothing on his
face but a faint white down with which it seemed unnecessary
to meddle. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe
had approached him with the proposition that he should wear
eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks, and it
had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early years was
to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him ashamed.
He wept and Roscoe had reluctantly relented.

Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, _The Boy Scouts in

Bimini Bay_, and began to read. But he found himself thinking
persistently about the war. America had joined the Allied
cause during the preceding month, and Benjamin wanted to
enlist, but, alas, sixteen was the minimum age, and he did not
look that old. His true age, which was fifty-seven, would have
disqualified him, anyway.

There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared with a
letter bearing a large official legend in the corner and
addressed to Mr. Benjamin Button. Benjamin tore it open
eagerly, and read the enclosure with delight. It informed him
that many reserve officers who had served in the Spanish-
American War were being called back into service with a higher
rank, and it enclosed his commission as brigadier-general in
the United States army with orders to report immediately.

Benjamin jumped to his feet fairly quivering with enthusiasm.

This was what he had wanted. He seized his cap, and ten
minutes later he had entered a large tailoring establishment
on Charles Street, and asked in his uncertain treble to be
measured for a uniform.

Page 37 of 42
"Want to play soldier, sonny?" demanded a clerk casually.

Benjamin flushed. "Say! Never mind what I want!" he retorted

angrily. "My name's Button and I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so
you know I'm good for it."

"Well," admitted the clerk hesitantly, "if you're not, I guess

your daddy is, all right."

Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was

completed. He had difficulty in obtaining the proper general's
insignia because the dealer kept insisting to Benjamin that a
nice V.W.C.A. badge would look just as well and be much more
fun to play with.

Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and

proceeded by train to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina, where he
was to command an infantry brigade. On a sultry April day he
approached the entrance to the camp, paid off the taxicab
which had brought him from the station, and turned to the
sentry on guard.

"Get some one to handle my luggage!" he said briskly.

The sentry eyed him reproachfully. "Say," he remarked, "where

you goin' with the general's duds, sonny?"

Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War, whirled upon

him with fire in his eye, but with, alas, a changing treble
voice.

Page 38 of 42
"Come to attention!" he tried to thunder; he paused for
breath--then suddenly he saw the sentry snap his heels
together and bring his rifle to the present. Benjamin
concealed a smile of gratification, but when he glanced around
his smile faded. It was not he who had inspired obedience, but
an imposing artillery colonel who was approaching on
horseback.

"Colonel!" called Benjamin shrilly.

The colonel came up, drew rein, and looked coolly down at him
with a twinkle in his eyes. "Whose little boy are you?" he
demanded kindly.

"I'll soon darn well show you whose little boy I am!" retorted
Benjamin in a ferocious voice. "Get down off that horse!"

The colonel roared with laughter.

"You want him, eh, general?"

"Here!" cried Benjamin desperately. "Read this." And he thrust

his commission toward the colonel. The colonel read it, his
eyes popping from their sockets. "Where'd you get this?" he
demanded, slipping the document into his own pocket. "I got it
from the Government, as you'll soon find out!" "You come along
with me," said the colonel with a peculiar look. "We'll go up
to headquarters and talk this over. Come along." The colonel
turned and began walking his horse in the direction of
headquarters. There was nothing for Benjamin to do but follow
with as much dignity as possible--meanwhile promising himself
a stern revenge. But this revenge did not materialise. Two
days later, however, his son Roscoe materialised from
Baltimore, hot and cross from a hasty trip, and escorted the
weeping general, _sans_ uniform, back to his home.

Page 39 of 42
II

In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. During the

attendant festivities, however, no one thought it "the thing"
to mention, that the little grubby boy, apparently about ten
years of age who played around the house with lead soldiers
and a miniature circus, was the new baby's own grandfather.

No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face was
crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his
presence was a source of torment. In the idiom of his
generation Roscoe did not consider the matter "efficient." It
seemed to him that his father, in refusing to look sixty, had
not behaved like a "red-blooded he-man"--this was Roscoe's
favourite expression--but in a curious and perverse manner.
Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as a half an
hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that
"live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a
scale was--was--was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested.

Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old enough to
play childish games with little Benjamin under the supervision
of the same nurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on
the same day, and Benjamin found that playing with little
strips of coloured paper, making mats and chains and curious
and beautiful designs, was the most fascinating game in the
world. Once he was bad and had to stand in the corner--then he
cried--but for the most part there were gay hours in the
cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows and
Miss Bailey's kind hand resting for a moment now and then in
his tousled hair.

Page 40 of 42
Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a year, but
Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy.
Sometimes when other tots talked about what they would do when
they grew up a shadow would cross his little face as if in a
dim, childish way he realised that those were things in which
he was never to share.

The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went back a third

year to the kindergarten, but he was too little now to
understand what the bright shining strips of paper were for.
He cried because the other boys were bigger than he, and he
was afraid of them. The teacher talked to him, but though he
tried to understand he could not understand at all.

He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana, in her

starched gingham dress, became the centre of his tiny world.
On bright days they walked in the park; Nana would point at a
great gray monster and say "elephant," and Benjamin would say
it after her, and when he was being undressed for bed that
night he would say it over and over aloud to her: "Elyphant,
elyphant, elyphant." Sometimes Nana let him jump on the bed,
which was fun, because if you sat down exactly right it would
bounce you up on your feet again, and if you said "Ah" for a
long time while you jumped you got a very pleasing broken
vocal effect.

He loved to take a big cane from the hat-rack and go around

hitting chairs and tables with it and saying: "Fight, fight,
fight." When there were people there the old ladies would
cluck at him, which interested him, and the young ladies would
try to kiss him, which he submitted to with mild boredom. And
when the long day was done at five o'clock he would go
upstairs with Nana and be fed on oatmeal and nice soft mushy
foods with a spoon.

Page 41 of 42
There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no
token came to him of his brave days at college, of the
glittering years when he flustered the hearts of many girls.
There were only the white, safe walls of his crib and Nana and
a man who came to see him sometimes, and a great big orange
ball that Nana pointed at just before his twilight bed hour
and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes were sleepy--
there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.

The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan
Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into
the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde
whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far
into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street
with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial
dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not
remember.

He did not remember clearly whether the milk was warm or cool
at his last feeding or how the days passed--there was only his
crib and Nana's familiar presence. And then he remembered
nothing. When he was hungry he cried--that was all. Through
the noons and nights he breathed and over him there were soft
mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely heard, and faintly
differentiated smells, and light and darkness.

Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces
that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk,
faded out altogether from his mind.

Page 42 of 42