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.

[Illustration: "AND JACOB SERVED SEVEN YEARS FOR RACHEL."]

For a little further on we find that Jacob wasn't as shrewd about
getting married as he was about breeding cattle that were
ring-streaked and grizzled, and so Laban, with the cunning of a
modern politician, palmed off his daughter Leah on Jacob as a bride.
But the next morning, when he discovered the trick, there were
probably matinees, side-shows and circuses in the tent of Laban, and
finally the upshot of the whole affair was that he agreed to serve
seven years more for Rachel, and then married her also. Far be it from
me to disparage Jacob's love, but we cannot help but notice that we
have no inspired statement saying that the seven years he served for
Rachel, after he had married her, "seemed but a few days for the love
he had to her."

But we can't censure him for that, for as we read we discover that in
his earnest and constant endeavor to save his precious person he had
no time to nurture his love. For the two wives, the two sisters, were
madly jealous of each other of course (and we can't blame them either,
for there never was a man so great that he could be divided between
two wives, several handmaids and more concubines, and be enough of him
to go around satisfactorily) and they made his life a howling
wilderness.

Leah, poor thing, longed for her fraudulent husband's love, and he
hated her. Rachel "envied her sister," and "Jacob's anger was kindled
against Rachel," and altogether the picture of their home is not very
enticing, and having gotten thus far we are more than ever convinced
that we do not want to follow the example of the "holy women" of old,
as Peter complimentarily, but ignorantly, calls them.

And Rachel and Leah, in order to spite and humble each other, each
gave her maid "to Jacob to wife" and strange as it may seem, he
accepted them both. It was like him.

Now about this time Leah's son "found mandrakes in the field" and
brought them to his mother. We suppose Rachel had a sweet tooth from
the fact that a little further on we find her offering to