ese 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 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 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