And Jacob's kiss is the first one that love ever pressed upon the lips of a blushing maid—at least it is the first one that is authoritatively recorded.
At that time Jacob started a fashion that "custom cannot stale," a fashion that while time lasts shall be as cheap as roses, laughter and sunshine, as thrilling as wine, as sweet as innocence and as new as love, a fashion that wealth, time or country cannot monopolize, and one that is as sweet to the beggar, and sweeter too, than to the king.
At the end of one short month we find him so desperately enamored that he said to Laban, Rachel's father: "I will serve thee seven years for thy younger daughter;" and the old gentleman, seeing an opportunity to get a hired man cheap, consented.
"And Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her."
What a world of devotion that one sentence reveals. As we read that we forget all about the prosaic age in which we live; forget the modern I'll-give-you-a-brown-stone-front-and-diamonds-in-exchange-for-your-youth-and-beauty-love, and believe in the kind that makes a man a god and a woman an angel, and we imagine that an affection so intense and deep that it could make seven weary years of labor "seem but a few days" must be as constant as the flowing tide, as steadfast as the stars—and then after a while we are desperately, despairingly sorry that we have read any further than that verse because we are so sadly disillusioned.
