98 BOYS OF THE BIBLE.

a fancy coat, and the costliest coat Joseph had upon his back.
Was Joseph foolish enough to get proud and show off just
because he had a fine coat? Could he, a grown young man
of seventeen, be so weak and foolish? you may ask. Well,
let boys of seventeen answer that question, and let them
answer it honestly. One thing is quite certain—this fine coat
that came down almost to Joseph’s feet, and made him quite
for the coat was more like a royal
‘robe than a coat—made the elder brethren cross, and angry,
and jealous. You will say it was very foolish of them. So
it was; it was foolish all the way round. It was very weak
of these up-grown men to get envious, and to entertain the
sentiment if even they did not express it—that if home-spun
was good enough for them it was good enough for Joseph,
too. That fine coat caused a world of trouble in that whole
family, just as fine clothes from that day to this have caused
trouble in tens of thousands of families, and will go on caus-
ing trouble to the end of time.

We cannot blame Joseph wholly for being vain. Those
who fed his vanity were more to blame than he; but we do
blame him for being foolish enough to be a tattler in the
family. We know there are times when it becomes a duty
not to keep silence, but these occasions are only few and far
between. The tale-bearer is not always moved by a strong
sense of duty, but more frequently from pure mischief, bab-
bles and babbles like a shallow brook, and unfortunately
succeeds too often in turning the melodies of life into most
unhappy discords.

There were other reasons that need not be entered upon
here, that helped to widen the breach between Joseph and
his brethren. Already there was little love lost between
them, and right upon all this the young dreamer, who seems

 

conspicuous in the family