The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Annotated Edition)

In "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (1922) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a child is born into nineteenth-century Baltimore an old man. His father, a proper gentleman of means, encounters first the disgruntled doctor, then the horrified nurses, and finally, his son, a small but wrinkled old man dangling his feet over the side of his crib. Mr. Button cannot accept that this old man is his son Benjamin. Rather than buy him the cane his son requests, Mr. Button cuts off his son's long, white beard and has a tailor outfit him in a suit with short pants suitable for a young boy.