Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (273 page)

When,
six
months
later,
the
engagement
of
Miss
Hildegarde
Mon-crief
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
tire
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,
everyone
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
his
son's
birth
certificate
in
large type
in
the
Baltimore
Blaze.
No
one
believed
it.
You
had
only
to
look at
Benjamin
and
see.

On
the
part
of
the
two
people
most
concerned
there
was
no
wavering.
So
many
of
the
stories
about
her
fiance
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.
.
.
.

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-inlaw
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
vigor
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.