s 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 now eating her bread
and milk with great sati