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!”