figures conspicuously in a love story of the Bible, and we imagine
they were the trysting places of the ancient young lovers.

While Jacob was loitering and gossiping with the young men he found
there, "and while he yet spake with them, Rachel came with her
father's sheep; for she kept them."

Now "Rachel was beauteous and well favored," and of course Jacob saw
all this at a glance, for a man never yet needed a telescope and a
week's time to decide whether a woman possessed the elements which
constituted beauty in his mind or not, and so Jacob gallantly rolled
the stone away from the well and watered the flock of Laban, and then,
with all the boldness which characterized his future notorious career,
he "kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept."

As there could hardly be anything but pleasure in kissing a lovely
maiden, we naturally infer that Jacob was very emotional and was
crying for effect, and that Rachel, with the consummate tact that all
the women of the Bible displayed when managing the men, perfectly
understood this, and had as little respect for him at the moment as
most women have for a tearful man. A man like Jacob cries easily, and
when he thus "lifted up his voice and wept," it is to be hoped the
girl entirely understood him.

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.

[Illustration: (Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted up his voice and
wept.)]

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