The Dover Anthology of American Literature Volume II (105 page)

We mentioned everything.

To another.

I do not wish reasons.

You mean you are taught early.

That is exactly what I mean.

And I feel the same.

You feel it to be the same.

Don't tempt him.

Do not tempt him.

This evening there was no question of temptation he was not the least interested.

Neither was she.

Of course she wasn't.

It's really not necessary to ask her.

I found it necessary.

You did

Certainly.

And when have you leisure.

Reading and knitting.

Reading or knitting.

Reading or knitting.

Yes reading or knitting.

In the evening.

Actively first.

He was very settled.

Where was he settled.

In Marseilles.

I cannot understand words.

Cannot you.

You are so easily deceived you don't ask what do they decide what are they to decide.

There is no reason.

No there is no reason.

Between meals.

Do you really sew.

He was so necessary to me.

We are equally pleased.

Come and stay.

Do
so.

Do you mean to be rude.

Did he.

I ask you why.

Tomorrow.

Yes tomorrow.

Every afternoon.

A dialogue.

What did you do with your dog.

We sent him into the country.

Was he a trouble.

Not at all but we thought he would be better off there.

Yes it isn't right to keep a large dog in the city.

Yes I agree with you.

Yes

Coming.

Yes certainly.

Do be quick.

Not in breathing.

No you know you don't mind.

We said yes.

Come ahead.

That sounded like an animal.

Were you expecting something.

I don't know.

Don't you know about it at all.

You know I don't believe it.

She did.

Well they are different

I am not very careful.

Mention that again.

Here.

Not here.

Don't receive wood.

Don't receive wood.

Well we went and found it.

Tomorrow.

Come tomorrow.

Come tomorrow.

Yes we said yes. Come tomorrow.

Coming
very well. Don't be irritable. Don't say you haven't been told. You know I want a telegram. Why.

Because emperors didn't.

I don't remember that.

I don't care for a long time.

For a long time to pass away.

Why not.

Because I like him.

That's what she said.

We said.

We will gladly come Saturday.

She will go.

Oh yes she will.

What is a conversation.

We can all sing.

A great many people come in.

A great many people come in.

Why do the days pass so quickly.

Because we are very happy.

Yes that's so.

That's it.

That is it.

Who cares for daisies.

Do you hear me.

Yes I can hear you.

Very well then explain.

That I care for daisies.

That we care for daisies.

Come in come in.

Yes and I will not cry.

No indeed.

We will picnic.

Oh yes.

We are very happy.

Very happy.

And content.

And content.

We will go and hear Tito Ruffo.

Here.

Yes here.

Oh yes I remember about that. He is to be here.

To
begin with what did we buy.

Scolding.

If you remember you will remember other things that frighten you.

Will I.

Yes and there is no necessity the explanation is not in your walking first of walking last of walking beside me the only reason that there is plenty of room is that I choose it.

Then we will say that it will rain.

The other day there was bright moonlight.

Not here.

No not here but on the whole there is more moonlight than in Brittany.

Come again.

Come in again.

Coming again.

Coming in again.

Come again.

I say I do understand calling.

Calling him.

Yes Polybe.

Come.

Come.

Come again and bring a book.

We meet him so often.

We meant to see about it. You mean the light.

I am proud of her. You have every reason to be and she takes it so naturally.

It is better that it is her hands.

Yes of course.

Nothing can pay for that.

Republics are so ungrateful.

Do you desire to appear here.

Why of course in that sense.

I do not know those words.

It is really wretched.

You do see it.

I don't see it that way.

No you wouldn't you would prefer the words well and tall.

Say it to me.

You know I never wished to be blamed.

An
effort to eat quickly.

Did you promise him.

Did I promise him the woods.

The woods.

Not now.

You mean not now.

S
OURCE:
Gertrude Stein.
Geography and Plays
. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1922.

F.
SCOTT FITZGERALD

F. Scott Fitzgerald, born in 1896, was the rising star in American fiction at the beginning of the 1920s. He wrote gorgeously phrased, engaging stories for big magazines, many of them about attractive, young, rich men and women. His most famous work today, the novel
The Great Gatsby
, appeared in 1925. Though he was enormously talented, alcoholism took a toll on him; after moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s, he died in 1940
.
“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” prompted Fitzgerald's amused and amusing note in the Table of Contents of
Tales of the Jazz Age
: “This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler's Note-books. The story was published in
Collier's
last summer and provoked this startling letter from an anonymous admirer in Cincinnati: ‘Sir—I have read the story Benjamin Button in
Colliers
and I wish to say that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic I have seen many peices of cheese in my life but of all the peices of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest peice. I hate to waste a peice of stationary on you but I will.' ”

The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
(1922)

Chapter 1

A
S 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.

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?”

“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-by!”

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.”

At this a look of utter terror spread itself over the 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. “Up-stairs. Right up-stairs. Go—
up!
”

She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button, bathed in a 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! It began a methodical descent 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 had 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 state it's put us all in this morning! It's perfectly outrageous! The hospital will never have the ghost of a reputation after—”

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

“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. Ranged around the walls were half a dozen white-enameled rolling cribs, each with a tag tied at the head.

“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 partially 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-colored 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.