Dear children, can you see what I mean by this little story? If you have a good, kind home, try to be very happy in it, for the time may come when you would give everything you possessed to be back in it—"Home, Sweet Home."
OUR SUNDAY AFTERNOONS.
A DREAM FOR ALL AGES.
T
he sun was fast sinking in the west; and the shades of night were spreading a deep gloom overall, as a poor, lone traveller, foot-sore and weary, looked around him for some place of rest. His face wore its saddest expression, for his heart was nearly bursting with grief; and, as he rolled along a big stone for his pillow, and laid his weary head upon it, it was watered with his tears. But only the fair moon and the twinkling stars seemed to see his grief; and, as he thought of his loneliness, he heaved a deep sigh, and wept afresh.
Far behind him, in the lovely and peaceful Beersheba, he had left the home of his youth, the mother whom he loved so dearly, the old sheep that he had so fondly tended, and the little pet lambs that had nestled in his bosom and gambolled by his side. There was his aged father, too, who lay stretched on his death-bed, and whom he might never hope to see again. And still fresh in his memory were all the old familiar scenes to which he might never again return: the soft green pastures, where, morning and evening, he had rested with his sheep, the great rock behind which he had led them to hide them from the noonday heat, and the quiet waters to which he had taken them that they might slake their thirst.
From one loved spot to another his thoughts would wander; and he shivered, as from cold, while he thought of the land all unknown to him to which he was journeying, of the strange faces that he would have to meet, and the strange voices that would fall upon his ear.
But saddest of all came the remembrance of the cause that had led to his banishment, the deep sin that he had committed, the cruel deceit that he had practised upon his father, the great wrong that he had inflicted upon his brother, the grief of the dying Isaac, the wrath of Esau, and the consequent necessary parting with all he held dear.