BOYS OF THE BIBLE. 97

Sometimes we have seen a very beautiful form of favor-
itism in a household. When some one member of the
family has been sick or afflicted, then every member of the
household has vied with each other in a happy rivalry as to
which should do the most to cheer the solitude or brighten
the lot of the sorrowing one. We have seen sick boys and
girls so loved and cared for and tended, because of their
sickness, that we have wondered if it would not almost be
worth while to bear such a burden for the sake of the love
it awakens. We can never lavish too much love upon our
troubled ones. If this be favoritism, it is the very best kind
of favoritism, and the more we have of it the better.

Surely it is pardonable if the youngest member of the
household should receive a little special attention. Only a
childish, miserable spirit could object to that. A child is a
child, and should have all the sunshine possible poured into
its young life.

But Joseph was not a child. He was seventeen years
of age. Think of that! Any boy who reads these pages
who is seventeen years of age knows very well that a boy
of seventeen is anything but a child. Seventeen is a glorious
age! It is just the age when the garden of youth is full of bud,
and blossom, and promise. But it is a very unfortunate age
for the exercise of fovoritism. It is just the age when petting
so quickly leads to spoiling. At this age very trifling honors
will awaken vanity. And when boys of seventeen begin
to over-estimate themselves, then the trouble begins.

It was so with Joseph. Both Jacob and Rachel thought
there was not another boy in the world like Joseph. They
thought nothing was too good for him, and so they must
buy for him ‘a coat of many colors.” There may not have
been so many colors in the coat after all; but it was quite