If You Touch Them They Vanish

Gouverneur Morris (1876-1953) was the author of Aladdin O'Brien (1902), The Pagan's Progress (1904), The Footprint (1908), The Spread Eagle and Other Stories (1910), We Three (1913), The Penalty (1913), If You Touch Them They Vanish (1913), The Incandescent Lily (1914), and Keeping the Peace (1924). "Old Martha wondered if the Poor Boy would have a smile for her. He had had so many in the old days, the baby days, the growing-up days, the college days, the "world so new and all" days. There were some which she would always remember. The smile he smiled one Christmas morning, when he put the grand fur coat around her shoulders, and the kiss on her cheek. The smile he smiled that day when they met in front of the photographer's, and he took her in and had their photograph taken together: she sitting and glaring with embarrassment at the camera, he standing, his hand on her shoulder, smiling-down on her."