BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 63

‘slave, but she had a mother’s heart. She was Sarah’s slave,
Sarah’s property, and so Sarah could do with her as she
would. It was all very well to be born in the house of so
‘great a man as Abraham, the Father of the Faithful. But
‘Slavery was a part of the life of those days, and wherever
‘slavery has shown its hateful head in any age of. the world,
it has always brought a curse in its train. Better to be born
in the home of the lowliest American citizen, where freedom
is in every breath of life, than to be born in a palace
where slavery may lay its awful hand upon you.

Ishmael was a fiery-spirited lad; there was very little of
the gentle and winning about him. He was a good deal
more likely to make enemies than friends. He was impul-
sive and headstrong, and, if not absolutely of a quatrelsome
‘disposition, he never missed the opportunity of a fight. *He
most likely would always “play fair and fight fair,” a phrase
which, if not grammatically correct, is quite good enough to
express a very honorable code amongst honorable boys. Ish-
mael was born to battle and strife. Before he was born,
the angel told his mother that her boy would have “his
hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”
And so it came to pass through many a stormy year.

We may be quite sure that Ishmael was no great favorite
with Sarah. She was the mistress of the house, and he was
the son of her slave, and perhaps she expected Ishmael to
render not only the respect due from youth to years, but that
servile homage that slaves are expected to show to those who
‘own them, as they own the cattle in their fields. There was
nothing servile or bending in the character of this lad, who,
doubtless in his very boyhood, gave signs of that strange dis-
position that made him in after years the wild man ef the
~woods and the hills.