Button, Button
by Maurice Clark

THE STORY: Button Alexander Woodhouse's socially prominent family consider him unbalanced.

He would rather be considered a useless eccentric than spend his youth in a mad quest for stocks and bonds.

He tries to limit his ambition to easy chairs, good food and homely philosophy, but there are conflicting forces around him.

Soon he is beset by wealthy women who try to force their hobbies upon him.

He runs away from an antique collector only to bump into a girl with some new variety of free verse, and evades his brother with a bag of golf clubs only to fall into the hands of an amateur psychologist who needs him to experiment on.

But much worse than any of these obstacles to his peace of mind is a pretty housemaid with a practical mind and genuine love for the easy-going and delightful Button.

Their elopement at the end from his “stuffed shirt” environment into her world of self-respecting workers is a scene of delightful romance, and Button's parting shots at the Woodhouse family brings on a hilarious bit of satire.