"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 had a feeling that his 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 this 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 small 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 an idea. But are you quite sure that this will satisfy you?"
"How could it fail?" said Midas.