My great sport during my ninth and tenth years was to play
buttons. These we would fillip around on some patch of unpaved
ground with a little pit for a billiard pocket. My own pockets were
usually full of these buttons. As the game was restricted to brass
ones from the uniforms of soldiers, my mother had plenty to do to
keep those pockets of mine in good repair. To develop skill for the
sport I would spend hours in some secluded spot, secretly
practising it by myself. Sometimes, as I was thus engaged, my
mother would seek me out and bring me a hunk of rye bread.

"Here," she would say, gravely, handing me it. And I would accept
it with preoccupied mien, take a deep bite, and go on filliping my
buttons

I gambled passionately and was continually counting my treasure,
or running around the big courtyard, jingling it self-consciously.
But one day I suddenly wearied of it all and traded my entire
hoard of buttons for a pocket-knife and some trinkets

"Don't you care for buttons any more?" mother inquired

"I can't bear the sight of them," I replied

She shrugged her shoulders smilingly, and called me "queer
fellow."

Sometimes I would fall to kissing her passionately. Once, after an
outburst of this kind, I said: "Are people sorry for us, mamma?"