A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant, beautifully
reverse itself. Eckels remembered the wording in the advertisements to the
letter. Out of chars and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden salamanders,
the old years, the green years, might leap; roses sweeten the air, white hair
turn Irish-black, wrinkles vanish; all, everything fly back to seed, flee death,
rush down to their beginnings, suns rise in western skies and set in glorious
easts, moons eat themselves opposite to the custom, all and everything cupping
one in another like Chinese boxes, rabbits into hats, all and everything
returning to the fresh death, the seed death, the green death, to the time
before the beginning. A touch of a hand might do it, the merest touch of a
hand.
