are three apples from mine own apple-tree. If she whom thou lovest loves
thee in return, she cannot resist the spell of their golden brightness.
When thou runnest against her, cast them one by one into the middle of
the course. If she love thee she will turn aside to pick them up. For her
they will be heavy as the gold they seem made of. For thee they will be
light as the fruit whose form they wear. Farewell and good luck to thy
race.’
“Thereupon darkness came over my eyes, and I could find no words to thank
her. When I awoke I thought it had been a dream, but lo! by my side upon
the sand lay the apples, shining in the sunlight.”
“And thy vow?” asked Atalanta. “How camest thou to make such a vow?”
He laughed at her words. “Long ago in my father’s house I heard of thee
and how thou couldst cast such a spell upon the hearts of men that for
thy sake they would fling away their lives. And a great desire came upon
me to see this thing for myself, for I could scarce believe it. So I set
forth alone to find thee, and hid my name from all men as I journeyed,
for thus could I be more free to act as seemed best in mine own eyes. And
I saw thee run in a race, and that glimpse was enough to tell me that I
too one day must run with thee. Yet was I more wary than my rivals. I
knew that to come as a suitor was the way to turn thy heart to stone.
Wherefore I pretended to be bound by a vow, which would bring me as a
passing stranger before thee. Deep in my heart I felt that when a man
desires one thing on earth above every other—when he loves that thing
better than life itself, he is likely to win it in the end, if he walk
patiently step by step in faith. He will win that thing, or death, in his
struggle for it; and he is content that so it should be.”
TURNING EVERYTHING INTO GOLD
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Once upon a time, there lived a very rich man, and a king besides, whose
name was Midas; and he had a little daughter, whom nobody but myself ever
heard of, and whose name I either never knew, or have entirely forgotten.
So, because I love odd names for little girls, I choose to call her
Marygold.
This King Midas was fonder of gold than of anything else in the world. He
valued his royal crown chiefly because it was composed of that precious
metal. If he loved anything better, or half so well, it was the one
little maiden who played so merrily around her father’s footstool. But
the more Midas loved his daughter, the more did he desire and seek for
wealth. He thought, foolish man! that the best thing he could possibly
do for this dear child would be to bequeath her the immensest pile of
yellow, glistening coin that had ever been heaped together since the
world was made. Thus, he gave all his thoughts and all his time to
this one purpose. If ever he happened to gaze for an instant at the
gold-tinted clouds of sunset, he wished that they were real gold, and
that they could be squeezed safely into his strong box. When little
Marygold ran to meet him, with a bunch of buttercups and dandelions, he
used to say, “Poh, poh, child! If these flowers were as golden as they
look, they would be worth the plucking!”
And yet, in his earlier days, before he was so entirely possessed of this
insane desire for riches, King Midas had shown a great taste for flowers.
He had planted a garden, in which grew the biggest and beautifulest and
sweetest roses that any mortal ever saw or smelt. These roses were still
growing in the garden, as large, as lovely, and as fragrant, as when
Midas used to pass whole hours in gazing at them, and inhaling their
perfume. But now, if he looked at them at all, it was only to calculate
how much the garden would be worth if each of the innumerable rose petals
were a thin plate of gold. And though he once was fond of music (in spite
of an idle story about his ears, which were said to resemble those of
an ass), the only music for poor Midas, now, was the chink of one coin
against another.
At length (as people always grow more and more foolish, unless they
take care to grow wiser and wiser), Midas had got to be so exceedingly
unreasonable that he could scarcely bear to see or touch any object
that was not gold. He made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large
portion of every day in a dark and dreary apartment, under ground, at
the basement of his palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. To this
dismal hole—for it was little better than a dungeon—Midas betook himself
whenever he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, after carefully
locking the door, he would take a bag of gold coin, or a gold cup as big
as a washbowl, or a heavy golden bar, or a peck-measure of gold-dust,
and bring them from the obscure corners of the room into the one bright
and narrow sunbeam that fell from the dungeon-like window. He valued the
sunbeam for no other reason but that his treasure would not shine without
its help. And then would he reckon over the coins in the bag; toss up
the bar, and catch it as it came down; sift the gold-dust through his
fingers; look at the funny image of his own face, as reflected in the
burnished circumference of the cup; and whisper to himself, “O Midas,
rich King Midas, what a happy man art thou!” But it was laughable to
see how the image of his face kept grinning at him, out of the polished
surface of the cup. It seemed to be aware of his foolish behavior, and to
have a naughty inclination to make fun of him.
Midas called himself a happy man, but felt that he was not yet quite
so happy as he might be. The very tiptop of enjoyment would never be
reached, unless the whole world were to become his treasure-room, and be
filled with yellow metal which should be all his own.
Now, I need hardly remind such wise little people as you are, that in the
old, old times, when King Midas was alive, a great many things came to
pass which we should consider wonderful if they were to happen in our own
day and country. And, on the other hand, a great many things take place
nowadays, which seem not only wonderful to us, but at which the people of
old times would have stared their eyes out. On the whole, I regard our
own times as the strangest of the two; but, however that may be, I must
go on with my story.
Midas was enjoying himself in his treasure-room, one day, as usual, when
he perceived a shadow fall over the heaps of gold, and, looking suddenly
up, what should he behold but the figure of a stranger, standing in the
bright and narrow sunbeam! It was a young man, with a cheerful and ruddy
face. Whether it was that the imagination of King Midas threw a yellow
tinge over everything, or whatever the cause might be, he could not help
fancying that the smile with which the stranger regarded him had a kind
of golden radiance in it. Certainly, although his figure intercepted the
sunshine, there was now a brighter gleam upon all the piled-up treasures
than before. Even the remotest corners had their share of it, and were
lighted up, when the stranger smiled, as with tips of flame and sparkles
of fire.
As Midas knew that he had carefully turned the key in the lock, and that
no mortal strength could possibly break into his treasure-room, he, of
course, concluded that his visitor must be something more than mortal. It
is no matter about telling you who he was. In those days, when the earth
was comparatively a new affair, it was supposed to be often the resort
of beings endowed with supernatural power, and who used to interest
themselves in the joys and sorrows of men, women, and children, half
playfully and half seriously. Midas had met such beings before now, and
was not sorry to meet one of them again. The stranger’s aspect, indeed,
was so good-humored and kindly, if not beneficent, that it would have
been unreasonable to suspect him of intending any mischief. It was far
more probable that he came to do Midas a favor. And what could that
favor be, unless to multiply his heaps of treasure?
The stranger gazed about the room; and when his lustrous smile had
glistened upon all the golden objects that were there, he turned again to
Midas.
“You are a wealthy man, friend Midas!” he observed. “I doubt whether any
other four walls, on earth, contain so much gold as you have contrived to
pile up in this room.”
“I have done pretty well—pretty well,” answered Midas in a discontented
tone. “But, after all, it is but a trifle, when you consider that it has
taken me my whole life to get it together. If one could live a thousand
years, he might have time to grow rich!”
“What!” exclaimed the stranger. “Then you are not satisfied?”
Midas shook his head.
“And pray what would satisfy you?” asked the stranger. “Merely for the
curiosity of the thing, I should be glad to know.”
Midas paused and meditated. He felt a presentiment that this stranger,
with such a golden luster in his good-humored smile, had come hither with
both the power and the purpose of gratifying his utmost wishes. Now,
therefore, was the fortunate moment, when he had but to speak, and obtain
whatever possible, or seemingly impossible thing, it might come into his
head to ask. So he thought, and thought, and thought, and heaped up one
golden mountain upon another, in his imagination, without being able to
imagine them big enough. At last, a bright idea occurred to King Midas.
It seemed really as bright as the glistening metal which he loved so much.
Raising his head, he looked the lustrous stranger in the face.
“Well, Midas,” observed his visitor, “I see that you have at length hit
upon something that will satisfy you. Tell me your wish.”
“It is only this,” replied Midas. “I am weary of collecting my treasures
with so much trouble, and beholding the heap so diminutive, after I have
done my best. I wish everything that I touch to be changed to gold!”
The stranger’s smile grew so very broad, that it seemed to fill the room
like an outburst of the sun, gleaming into a shadowy dell, where the
yellow autumnal leaves—for so looked the lumps and particles of gold—lie
strewn in the glow of light.
“The Golden Touch!” exclaimed he. “You certainly deserve credit, friend
Midas, for striking out so brilliant a conception. But are you quite sure
that this will satisfy you?”
“How could it fail?” said Midas.
“And will you never regret the possession of it?”
“What could induce me?” asked Midas. “I ask nothing else, to render me
perfectly happy.”
“Be it as you wish, then,” replied the stranger, waving his hand in token
of farewell. “To-morrow at sunrise, you will find yourself gifted with
the Golden Touch.”
The figure of the stranger then became exceedingly bright, and Midas
involuntarily closed his eyes. On opening them again, he beheld only one
yellow sunbeam in the room, and, all around him, the glistening of the
precious metal which he had spent his life in hoarding up.
Whether Midas slept as usual that night, the story does not say. Asleep
or awake, however, his mind was probably in the state of a child’s, to
whom a beautiful new plaything has been promised in the morning. At any
rate, day had hardly peeped over the hills, when King Midas was broad
awake, and, stretching his arms out of bed, began to touch the objects
that were within reach. He was anxious to prove whether the Golden Touch
had really come, according to the stranger’s promise. So he laid his
finger on a chair by the bedside, and on various other things, but was
grievously disappointed to perceive that they remained of exactly the
same substance as before. Indeed, he felt very much afraid that he had
only dreamed about the lustrous stranger, or else that the latter had
been making game of him. And what a miserable affair would it be, if,
after all his hopes, Midas must content himself with what little gold
he could scrape together by ordinary means, instead of creating it by a
touch!
All this while, it was only the gray of the morning, with but a streak of
brightness along the edge of the sky, where Midas could not see it. He
lay in a very disconsolate mood, regretting the downfall of his hopes,
and kept growing sadder and sadder, until the earliest sunbeam shone
through the window, and gilded the ceiling over his head. It seemed to
Midas that this bright yellow sunbeam was reflected in rather a singular
way on the white covering of the bed. Looking more closely, what was his
astonishment and delight, when he found that his linen fabric had been
transmuted to what seemed a woven texture of the purest and brightest
gold! The Golden Touch had come to him with the first sunbeam!
Midas started up, in a kind of joyful frenzy, and ran about the room,
grasping at everything that happened to be in his way. He seized one
of the bed-posts, and it became immediately a fluted golden pillar. He
pulled aside a window curtain, in order to admit a clear spectacle of the
wonders which he was performing; and the tassel grew heavy in his hand—a
mass of gold. He took up a book from the table. At his first touch, it
assumed the appearance of such a splendidly bound and gilt-edged volume
as one often meets with nowadays; but, on running his fingers through the
leaves, behold! it was a bundle of thin golden plates, in which all the
wisdom of the book had grown illegible. He hurriedly put on his clothes,
and was enraptured to see himself in a magnificent suit of gold cloth,
which retained its flexibility and softness, although it burdened him
a little with its weight. He drew out his handkerchief, which little
Marygold had hemmed for him. That was likewise gold, with the dear
child’s neat and pretty stitches running all along the border, in gold
thread!
Somehow or other, this last transformation did not quite please King
Midas. He would rather that his little daughter’s handiwork should have
remained just the same as when she climbed his knee and put it into his
hand.
But it was not worth while to vex himself about a trifle. Midas now took
his spectacles from his pocket, and put them on his nose, in order that
he might see more distinctly what he was about. In those days, spectacles
for common people had not been invented, but were already worn by kings;
else, how could Midas have had any? To his great perplexity, however,
excellent as the glasses were, he discovered that he could not possibly
see through them. But this was the most natural thing in the world; for,
on taking them off, the transparent crystals turned out to be plates
of yellow metal, and, of course, were worthless as spectacles, though
valuable as gold. It struck Midas as rather inconvenient that, with
all his wealth, he could never again be rich enough to own a pair of
serviceable spectacles.
“It is no great matter, nevertheless,” said he to himself, very
philosophically. “We cannot expect any great good, without its being
accompanied with some small inconvenience. The Golden Touch is worth
the sacrifice of a pair of spectacles, at least, if not of one’s very
eyesight. My own eyes will serve for ordinary purposes, and little
Marygold will soon be old enough to read to me.”
Wise King Midas was so exalted by his good fortune, that the palace
seemed not sufficiently spacious to contain him. He therefore went down
stairs, and smiled, on observing that the balustrade of the staircase
became a bar of burnished gold, as his hand passed over it, in his
descent. He lifted the door-latch (it was brass only a moment ago, but
golden when his fingers quitted it), and emerged into the garden. Here,
as it happened, he found a great number of beautiful roses in full bloom,
and others in all the stages of lovely bud and blossom. Very delicious
was their fragrance in the morning breeze. Their delicate blush was one
of the fairest sights in the world; so gentle, so modest, and so full of
sweet tranquillity, did these roses seem to be.
But Midas knew a way to make them far more precious, according to his
way of thinking, than roses had ever been before. So he took great
pains in going from bush to bush, and exercised his magic touch most
indefatigably; until every individual flower and bud, and even the worms
at the heart of some of them, were changed to gold. By the time this good
work was completed, King Midas was summoned to breakfast; and as the
morning air had given him an excellent appetite, he made haste back to
the palace.
What was usually a king’s breakfast in the days of Midas, I really do
not know, and cannot stop now to investigate. To the best of my belief,
however, on this particular morning, the breakfast consisted of hot
cakes, some nice little brook trout, roasted potatoes, fresh boiled eggs,
and coffee, for King Midas himself, and a bowl of bread and milk for his
daughter Marygold. At all events, this is a breakfast fit to set before
a king; and, whether he had it or not, King Midas could not have had a
better.
Little Marygold had not yet made her appearance. Her father ordered her
to be called, and, seating himself at table, awaited the child’s coming,
in order to begin his own breakfast. To do Midas justice, he really loved
his daughter, and loved her so much the more this morning, on account
of the good fortune which had befallen him. It was not a great while
before he heard her coming along the passageway crying bitterly. This
circumstance surprised him, because Marygold was one of the cheerfullest
little people whom you would see in a summer’s day, and hardly shed a
thimbleful of tears in a twelvemonth. When Midas heard her sobs, he
determined to put little Marygold into better spirits, by an agreeable
surprise; so, leaning across the table, he touched his daughter’s
bowl (which was a china one, with pretty figures all around it), and
transmuted it to gleaming gold.
Meanwhile, Marygold slowly and disconsolately opened the door, and showed
herself with her apron at her eyes, still sobbing as if her heart would
break.
“How now, my little lady!” cried Midas. “Pray what is the matter with
you, this bright morning?”
Marygold, without taking the apron from her eyes, held out her hand, in
which was one of the roses which Midas had so recently transmuted.
“Beautiful!” exclaimed her father. “And what is there in this magnificent
golden rose to make you cry?”
“Ah, dear father!” answered the child, as well as her sobs would let her;
“it is not beautiful, but the ugliest flower that ever grew! As soon as I
was dressed I ran into the garden to gather some roses for you; because
I know you like them, and like them the better when gathered by your
little daughter. But, oh dear, dear me! What do you think has happened?
Such a misfortune! All the beautiful roses, that smelled so sweetly and
had so many lovely blushes, are blighted and spoilt! They are grown quite
yellow, as you see this one, and have no longer any fragrance! What can
have been the matter with them?”
“Poh, my dear little girl—pray don’t cry about it!” said Midas, who
was ashamed to confess that he himself had wrought the change which so
greatly afflicted her. “Sit down and eat your bread and milk! You will
find it easy enough to exchange a golden rose like that (which will last
hundreds of years) for an ordinary one which would wither in a day.”
“I don’t care for such roses as this!” cried Marygold, tossing it
contemptuously away. “It has no smell, and the hard petals prick my nose!”
The child now sat down to table, but was so occupied with her grief
for the blighted roses that she did not even notice the wonderful
transmutation of her china bowl. Perhaps this was all the better; for
Marygold was accustomed to take pleasure in looking at the queer figures,
and strange trees and houses, that were painted on the circumference of
the bowl; and these ornaments were now entirely lost in the yellow hue of
the metal.
Midas, meanwhile, had poured out a cup of coffee, and, as a matter of
course, the coffee-pot, whatever metal it may have been when he took it
up, was gold when he set it down. He thought to himself, that it was
rather an extravagant style of splendor, in a king of his simple habits,
to breakfast off a service of gold, and began to be puzzled with the
difficulty of keeping his treasures safe. The cupboard and the kitchen
would no longer be a secure place of deposit for articles so valuable as
golden bowls and coffee-pots.
Amid these thoughts, he lifted a spoonful of coffee to his lips, and,
sipping it, was astonished to perceive that, the instant his lips touched
the liquid, it became molten gold, and, the next moment hardened into a
lump!
“Ha!” exclaimed Midas, rather aghast.
“What is the matter, father?” asked little Marygold, gazing at him, with
the tears still standing in her eyes.
“Nothing, child, nothing!” said Midas. “Eat your milk, before it gets
quite cold.”
He took one of the nice little trouts on his plate, and, by way of
experiment, touched its tail with his finger. To his horror, it was
immediately transmuted from an admirably fried brook-trout into a
gold-fish, though not one of those gold-fishes which people often keep
in glass globes, as ornaments for the parlor. No; but it was really a
metallic fish, and looked as if it had been very cunningly made by the
nicest goldsmith in the world. Its little bones were now golden wires;
its fins and tail were thin plates of gold; and there were the marks of
the fork in it, and all the delicate, frothy appearance of a nicely fried
fish, exactly imitated in metal. A very pretty piece of work, as you may
suppose; only King Midas, just at that moment, would much rather have
had a real trout in his dish than this elaborate and valuable imitation
of one.
“I don’t quite see,” thought he to himself, “how I am to get any
breakfast!”
He took one of the smoking-hot cakes, and had scarcely broken it, when,
to his cruel mortification, though, a moment before, it had been of the
whitest wheat, it assumed the yellow hue of Indian meal. To say the
truth, if it had really been a hot Indian cake, Midas would have prized
it a good deal more than he now did, when its solidity and increased
weight made him too bitterly sensible that it was gold. Almost in
despair, he helped himself to a boiled egg, which immediately underwent
a change similar to those of the trout and the cake. The egg, indeed,
might have been mistaken for one of those which the famous goose, in the
story-book, was in the habit of laying; but King Midas was the only goose
that had had anything to do with the matter.
“Well, this is a quandary!” thought he, leaning back in his chair, and
looking quite enviously at little Marygold, who was not eating her bread
and milk with great satisfaction. “Such a costly breakfast before me, and
nothing that can be eaten!”
Hoping that, by dint of great dispatch, he might avoid what he now felt
to be a considerable inconvenience, King Midas next snatched a hot
potato, and attempted to cram it into his mouth, and swallow it in a
hurry. But the Golden Touch was too nimble for him. He found his mouth
full, not of mealy potato, but of solid metal, which so burnt his tongue
that he roared aloud, and, jumping up from the table, began to dance and
stamp about the room both with pain and affright.
“Father, dear father!” cried little Marygold, who was a very affectionate
child, “pray what is the matter? Have you burnt your mouth?”
“Ah, dear child,” groaned Midas, dolefully, “I don’t know what is to
become of your poor father!”
And, truly, my dear little folks, did you ever hear of such a pitiable
case in all your lives? Here was literally the richest breakfast that
could be set before a king, and its very richness made it absolutely good
for nothing. The poorest laborer, sitting down to his crust of bread and
cup of water, was far better off than King Midas, whose delicate food
was really worth its weight in gold. And what was to be done? Already,
at breakfast, Midas was excessively hungry. Would he be less so by
dinner-time? And how ravenous would be his appetite for supper, which
must undoubtedly consist of the same sort of indigestible dishes as those
now before him! How many days, think you, would he survive a continuance
of this rich fare?
These reflections so troubled wise King Midas, that he began to doubt
whether, after all, riches are the one desirable thing in the world,
or even the most desirable. But this was only a passing thought. So
fascinated was Midas with the glitter of the yellow metal, that he
would still have refused to give up the Golden Touch for so paltry a
consideration as a breakfast. Just imagine what a price for one meal’s
victuals. It would have been the same as paying millions and millions of
money (and as many millions more as would take forever to reckon up) for
some fried trout, an egg, a potato, a hot cake, and a cup of coffee!
“It would be quite too dear,” thought Midas.