74 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

fair young German, with flaxen hair and pale blue eyes, you
would not have a greater contrast in personal appearance
than was presented by these twin brcthers. These boys, born
in the same home, the same day, of the same mother, seem
to touch the very opposite poles of character.

As they grew up, Esau had a rough, red-bearded face,
and his very hands were shaggy with hair, while Jacob was
fair and beardless, with a face as smooth as a girl’s. Esau
was a boy of the hills and mountains; he was bronzed and
brown with the Syrian sun, but Jacob was a plain man, who
preferred to linger near the tents. The sacred record says:

“And the boys grew; and Esau was a cunning hunter, a
man of the field: and Jacob was a plain man dwelling in tents.
And Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison;
but Rebekah loved Jacob.”

Esau from his early boyhood loved the fields and the
mountains. He was bold, fearless, daring. A home life would
have been altogether too quiet and uninteresting for him. He
was full of adventure, with a large, impetuous nature that
scorned the very thought of difficulty; he would turn what
would have been stumbling blocks in the way of Jacob into
stepping stones for his ambition. Ready for every bold task
or endeavor, he would have made a splendid man for pioneer
work—just the kind of man who, in these later days, would
have gone out West, and would have eminently succeeded in
beating out the wild, rocky difficulties of that romantic region
into an orderly civilization. A strong, frank, self-willed sort
of Pagan was this same Esau—a manly fellow in his way——
who seems to have had little fear of God before his eyes,
and no fear of man. He was not his mother’s favorite, and he
knew it, but his father was proud of him, and that was enough
for him.