"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 sometimes another passing
takes it from them.
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