res and moved round and round her.
Then one came to her softly, saying, "Let me lay my hand upon thy side
where the child sleeps. If I shall touch him he shall be as I."

She asked, "Who are you?"

And he said, "I am Health. Whom I touch will have always the red blood
dancing in his veins; he will not know weariness nor pain; life will be
a long laugh to him."

"No," said another, "let me touch; for I am Wealth. If I touch him
material care shall not feed on him. He shall live on the blood and
sinews of his fellow-men, if he will; and what his eye lusts for, his
hand will have. He shall not know 'I want.'" And the child lay still
like lead.

And another said, "Let me touch him: I am Fame. The man I touch, I
lead to a high hill where all men may see him. When he dies he is not
forgotten, his name rings down the centuries, each echoes it on to his
fellows. Think--not to be forgotten through the ages!"

And the mother lay breathing steadily, but in the brain-picture they
pressed closer to her.

"Let me touch the child," said one, "for I am Love. If I touch him he
shall not walk through life alone. In the greatest dark, when he puts
out his hand he shall find another hand by it. When the world is against
him, another shall say, 'You and I.'" And the child trembled.

But another pressed close and said, "Let me touch; for I am Talent. I
can do all things--that have been done before. I touch the soldier, the
statesman, the thinker, and the politician who succeed; and the writer
who is never before his time, and never behind it. If I touch the child
he shall not weep for failure."

About the mother's head the bees were flying, touching her with their
long tapering limbs; and, in her brain-picture, out of the shadow of
the room came one with sallow face, deep-lined, the cheeks drawn into
hollows, and a mouth smiling quiveringly. He stretched out his hand. And
the mother drew back, and cried, "Who are you?" He answered nothing; and
she looked up between his eyelids. And she said, "What can you give the
child--health?" And he said, "The man I touch, there wakes up in his
blood a burning fever, that shall lick his blood as fire. The fever that
I will give him shall be cured when his life is cured."

"You give wealth?"

He shook his head. "The man whom I touch, when he bends to pick up gold,
he sees suddenly a light over his head in the sky; while he looks up to
see it, the gold slips from between his fingers, or sometim