You know, it is not a very easy thing to transplant an old tree; and Jacob has hard work to get away from the place where he has lived so long. He finally bids good-by to the old place, and leaves his blessing with the neighbors; and then his sons steady him, while he, still determined to help himself, gets into the wagon—stiff, old and decrepit.
Yonder they go—Jacob and his sons, his sons’ wives and their children, eighty-two in all—followed by herds and flocks, which the herdsmen drive along. They are going out from famine to luxuriance; they are going from a plain country home to the finest palace under the sun. Joseph, the prime minister, gets into his chariot and is driven down to meet the old man. Joseph’s charioteer holds up the horses on the one side; the dust-covered wagons of the emigrants stop on the other.
Joseph, instead of waiting for his father to come, leaps out of the chariot and jumps into the emigrants’ wagon, throws his arms around the old man, and weeps aloud for past memories and present joy.
The father, Jacob, can hardly think it is his boy. Why, the smooth brow of childhood has now become a wrinkled brow—wrinkled with the cares of state—and the garb of the shepherd boy has become a robe royally bedizened!
But as the old man finally realizes that it is actually Joseph, I see the thin lip quiver against the toothless gum, as he cries out: “Now let me die, since I have seen thy face; behold, Joseph is yet alive!”
LAZARUS.
We stand in one of the finest private houses of the olden time. Every room is luxurious. The floor—made of stones, gypsum, coal and chalk, pounded together—is hard and beautiful. From the roof, surrounded by a balustrade, you take in all the beauty of the landscape.
The porch is cool and refreshing, where sit the people who have come in to look at the building, and are waiting for the usher. In this place you hear the crystal plash of the fountains.
The windows, reaching to the floor and adorned, are quiet places to lounge in; and we sit here, listening to the stamp of the horses in the princely stables.
Venison and partridge, delicate morsels of fatted calf, and honey, figs, dates, pomegranates and fish that only two hours ago glided in the lake, and bowls of fine sherbet from Egypt—these make up the feast, accompanied with riddles and jests that evoke roaring laughter, with occasional outbursts of music, in which harps thrum and cymbals clap and shepherd’s pipe whistles.