Leonid Andreyev in “Two Letters” on a childhood longing for zhamki and desires fulfilled too late

When I was a boy of seven or eight, I was passionately fond of the cheap mint gingerbreads sold in our out-of-the-way street, in a small shop; for some reason they were called "zhamki", and for a kopeck you were given two of them. And I do not know why I never had enough kopecks to eat my fill: my parents were not poor at that time and I wanted for nothing else, but for zhamki I
always fell short. Of course, it was a small madness, a childish mania. But
I remember my dreams of zhamki and my black envy of those who ate them; I remember their
extraordinary taste and look, that thin chalky crust that
broke softly under the fingers, I remember my longing for a million zhamki, a whole mountain of gingerbreads! Probably I ate a good many of them, but I wanted still more, still more;
and to this day, many decades later, my hunger has remained unsatisfied. Do you understand it? I can buy that million zhamki, and sometimes I do, in fact, buy a pound or two, and the servants eat them: I do not want those, those are strangers, and their taste is unknown to me. It has come, but too late. Everything comes too late

Leonid Andreyev. "Two Letters"