The only metal in the world that is yellow is the most precious of them all—gold. Brass is not a metal, but an alloy, a compound. And the color which gold shares with the sun has a great deal to do with its value. I do not suppose it would be possible that we should ever have come to love and admire any metal so much as to choose it for our highest currency and our ornaments, no matter how rare or ductile it might be, if it were of a dark, dull, gloomy color. The human eye never gets too old to be pleased with very much the same things which pleased it in childhood; and no eye is insensible to that precious yellow.
I like sometimes to think back to the first man of all men that ever held that rock of the sun in his savage hand, and to imagine how he found it, and how it made his sharp eyes twinkle, and how he wondered at its weight, and pounded it with one smooth rock upon another and found he could flatten it. All these things come by accident, and gold was an accident that befell when the world was very young. No doubt there had been a great rain, that washed the heavy lump from its nest in some gravelly stream bank, and the prehistoric man, in his tunic of skins, chanced that way and found it. Mayhap it was the very rain of the Flood itself, and the poor barbarian who picked up the yellow nugget sank with it still in his swarthy fist.
We do not even know the name of the man who first discovered gold, nor where he lived, nor when. But it was very, very long ago. Before the time of Joseph and the coat of many colors, gold had already become not only a discovered fact, but a part of the world. The early Egyptians got their gold from Nubia, so very likely the discovery was first made in Africa. At all events, it dates back to the very childhood of the race; and before Cadmus had found those more important nuggets of the alphabet, mankind had achieved the prettiest plaything it ever found.
In the very first chapter of the first and noblest of poems, Homer tells of the priest who came with a golden ransom to the camp of the Greeks before Troy, to buy his daughter free; and the sunny metal figures everywhere in the oldest mythology we know. You have all read—and I hope in Hawthorne’s “Tanglewood Tales,” where the story is more beautifully told than it was ever elsewhere—of Jason and the Argonauts and of how they sailed to find the Golden Fleece. That was a fabulous ram-skin, whose locks were of pure gold. No wonder the deadly dragon in the dark groves of the Colchian king guarded it so jealously. Of course the myth is only a poetic form—as stories generally assume in the folk-lore of an undeveloped race—of saying that Jason and his bold fellow-sailors of the Argo sailed to the gold fields of Asia, and found them. The mines whose fabled richness tempted them to that adventurous voyage in their overgrown row-boat of fifty oars, were in the Caucasus mountains, and produced a great deal of the gold which was used by the ancients. They were doubtless among the first gold mines in the world, and their product gilded the splendor of many of the first great monarchs of history. As late as 1875 an attempt was made by Europeans to work these mines, but nothing came of it.
“Rich as Crœsus” has been for more than two thousand years a proverb which is not yet supplanted; and that last king of Lydia—and richest king of all time, according to the ancient myths—got his wealth from placer mines in the river Pactolus, whose name has been as synonymous with gold as Crœsus’s own. One of the strangest and wisest of the folk-stories of ancient Greece tells how that little river in Asia Minor first gained its golden sands. Some seven hundred years before Christ, there was a king of Phrygia who had more gold than Crœsus ever dreamed of—so much gold that it made him the poorest man in the world! It was King Midas, son of Gordius, who earned this strange distinction. He had done a favor to Dionysus, and the god said gratefully: “Wish one wish, whatever thou wilt, and I will grant it.” Now Midas had already caught the most dangerous of all “yellow fevers”—the fever for gold—and he replied: “Then let it be that all things which I shall touch shall be turned into gold.”
Dionysus promptly granted this foolish prayer; and Midas was very happy for a little time. He picked up stones from the ground, and instantly they changed to great lumps of gold. His staff was gold, and his very clothing became yellow and so heavy that he could barely stagger under its weight. This was very fine indeed! He touched the corner of his palace—and lo! the whole building became a house of pure gold. Splendid! He entered, and touched what took his fancy; and furniture, and clothing, and all, underwent the same magic change. Better and better! “I’m the luckiest king alive,” chuckled Midas, still looking about for something new to transmute.
But even kings who have the golden touch must sometimes eat, and presently Midas grew hungry with so much wealth-making. He clapped his hands, and the servants spread the royal table. A touch of the royal finger, and table and cloth and dishes were yellow gold. This was something like! The exhilarated king sat down and broke a piece of bread—but as he lifted it, it was strangely heavy, and he saw that it, too, was of the precious metal! A doubt ran through his foolish head whether even the golden touch might not have its drawbacks; but he was very hungry, and did not wait to weigh the question. If his fingers turned the bread to gold, he would take something from a spoon—and he lifted a ladle of broth to his mouth. But the instant it touched his lips, the broth turned to a great yellow button, which dropped ringing back upon the golden board.
The disquieted king rose and walked out of the palace. At the door he met his fair-faced little daughter, who held up a bright flower to him. Midas laid his hand gently upon her head, for he loved the child, foolish as he was. And lo! his daughter stood motionless before him—a pitiful little statue of shining gold!
How much longer this accursed power tormented the miserable monarch the myth does not tell us; but he was cured at last by bathing in the river Pactolus, and the washing away of his magic power filled the sands of the stream with golden grains.