The Egyptian capital was the focus of the world’s wealth. In ships and
barges, there had been brought to it: From India, frankincense, cinnamon,
ivory and diamonds; from the North, marble and iron; from Syria, purple
and silk; from Greece, some of the finest horses of the world and some
of the most brilliant chariots; and from all the Earth, that which could
best please the eye, charm the ear and gratify the taste.
There were temples aflame with red sandstone, entered by gateways that
were guarded by pillars bewildering with hieroglyphics, wound with brazen
serpents and adorned with winged creatures--their eyes, beaks and pinions
glittering with precious stones.
There were marble columns blooming into white flower buds; there were
stone pillars, at the top bursting into the shape of the lotus when in
full bloom.
Along the avenues--lined with sphinx, fane and obelisk--there were
princes who came in gorgeously upholstered palanquin, carried by servants
in scarlet, or else were drawn by vehicles, the snow-white horses,
golden-bitted and six abreast, dashing at full run.
There were fountains from stone-wreathed vases climbing the ladders of
the light. You would hear a bolt shove, and a door of brass would open
like a flash of the sun. The surrounding gardens were saturated with
odors that mounted the terrace, dripped from the arbors and burned their
incense in the Egyptian noon.
On the floors of mosaic the glories of Pharaoh were spelled out in
letters of porphyry, beryl and flame. There were ornaments twisted from
the wood of the tamarisk, embossed with silver breaking into foam. There
were footstools made out of a single precious stone. There were beds
fashioned out of a crouched lion in bronze. There were chairs spotted
with the sleek hide of the leopard. There were sofas footed with the
claws of wild beasts, and armed with the beaks of birds.
As you stand on the level beach of the sea on a Summer day, and look each
way, there are miles of breakers, white with the ocean foam, dashing
shoreward; so it seemed as if the sea of the world’s pomp and wealth
in the Egyptian capital for miles and miles flung itself up into white
breakers of marble temple, mausoleum and obelisk.
This was the place where Joseph, the shepherd boy, was called to stand
next to Pharaoh in honor.
What a contrast between this scene and his humble starting--between this
scene and the pit into which his brothers threw him! Yet Joseph was not
forgetful of his early home; he was not ashamed of where he came from.
The bishop of Mentz, descended from a wheelwright, covered his house
with spokes, hammers and wheels; and the king of Sicily, in honor of
his father, who was a potter, refused to drink out of any thing but an
earthen vessel.
So Joseph was not ashamed of his early surroundings, or of his
old-time father, or of his brothers. When the latter came up from the
famine-stricken land to get corn from the Egyptian king’s corn crib,
Joseph, instead of chiding them for the way they had maltreated and
abused him, sent them back with wagons, which King Pharaoh furnished,
laden with corn; and old Jacob, the father, was brought back in the
very same wagons, that Joseph, the son, might see him and give him a
comfortable home all the rest of his days.
Well, I hear the wagons, the king’s wagons, rumbling down in front of the
palace. On the outside of the palace, to see the wagons depart, stands
Pharaoh in royal robes; and beside him stands Prime Minister Joseph,
with a chain of gold around his neck, and on his hand a ring given by
Pharaoh to him, so that any time he wanted to stamp the royal seal upon a
document he could do so conveniently.
Wagon after wagon rolls on down from the palace, laden with corn, meat,
changes of raiment and every thing that could aid a famine-stricken
people.
I see aged Jacob, one day, seated in the front of his house. He is
probably thinking of his absent boys (for sons, however old they get, are
never to a father any more than boys); and while he is seated there, he
sees dust arising, and he hears wagons rumbling, and he wonders what is
coming now, for the whole land had been smitten with the famine, and was
in silence.
But after a while the wagons have come near enough, and he sees his sons
on the wagons, and before they come quite up, they shout:
“Joseph is yet alive!”
The old man faints dead away. I do not wonder at it. The boys now tell
the story how that the boy, the long-absent Joseph, has got to be the
first man in the Egyptian palace.
While they unload the wagons, the wan and wasted creatures in the
neighborhood come up and ask for a handful of corn, and they are
satisfied.
One day the wagons are brought up, for Jacob, the old father, is about to
go to see Joseph in the Egyptian palace.
You know, it is not a very easy thing to transplant an old tree; and
Jacob has hard work to get away from the place where he has lived so
long. He finally bids good-by to the old place, and leaves his blessing
with the neighbors; and then his sons steady him, while he, still
determined to help himself, gets into the wagon--stiff, old and decrepit.
Yonder they go--Jacob and his sons, his sons’ wives and their children,
eighty-two in all--followed by herds and flocks, which the herdsmen drive
along. They are going out from famine to luxuriance; they are going from
a plain country home to the finest palace under the sun. Joseph, the
prime minister, gets into his chariot and is driven down to meet the
old man. Joseph’s charioteer holds up the horses on the one side; the
dust-covered wagons of the emigrants stop on the other.
Joseph, instead of waiting for his father to come, leaps out of the
chariot and jumps into the emigrants’ wagon, throws his arms around the
old man, and weeps aloud for past memories and present joy.
The father, Jacob, can hardly think it is his boy. Why, the smooth brow
of childhood has now become a wrinkled brow--wrinkled with the cares
of state--and the garb of the shepherd boy has become a robe royally
bedizened!
But as the old man finally realizes that it is actually Joseph, I see the
thin lip quiver against the toothless gum, as he cries out: “Now let me
die, since I have seen thy face; behold, Joseph is yet alive!”