implore the god to take back the gift of gold.

At last, when nearly starved to death, he found him. “What!” said Bacchus, “are you not content yet? Do you want more gold still?”

“Gold!” cried Midas, “I hate the horrible word! I am starving. Make me the poorest man in the whole world. Silenus taught me much; but I have learned for myself that a mountain of gold is not the worth of a single drop of dew.”

“I will take back my gift, then,” said Bacchus. “But I will not give you another instead of it, because all the gods of Olympus could not give you anything better than this lesson. You may wash away your folly in the first river you come to. Good-bye—and only don’t think that gold is not a good thing because too much of it is a bad one.”

Midas ran to the banks of the river Pactolus, which ran hard by. He threw off his golden clothes, and hurried barefoot over the sands of the river—and the sand, wherever his naked feet touched it, turned to gold. He plunged into the water, and swam through to the other side. The Curse of the Golden Touch left him, and he ate and drank, and never hungered after gold again. He had learned that the best thing one can do with too much gold is to give it away as fast as one can.

The sand of the river Pactolus is said to have gold in it to this day.