It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book which is so gemmed with beautiful passages as the Bible; but it is certain that not many things within its lids may take rank above the exquisite story of Joseph.  Who taught those ancient writers their simplicity of language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and above all, their faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of the reader and making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell itself?  Shakspeare is always present when one reads his book; Macaulay is present when we follow the march of his stately sentences; but the Old Testament writers are hidden from view.

If the pit I have been speaking of is the right one, a scene transpired there, long ages ago, which is familiar to us all in pictures.  The sons of Jacob had been pasturing their flocks near there.  Their father grew uneasy at their long absence, and sent Joseph, his favorite, to see if any thing had gone wrong with them.  He traveled six or seven days’ journey; he was only seventeen years old, and, boy like, he toiled through that long stretch of the vilest, rockiest, dustiest country in Asia, arrayed in the pride of his heart, his beautiful claw-hammer coat of many colors.  Joseph was the favorite, and that was one crime in the eyes of his brethren; he had dreamed dreams, and interpreted them to foreshadow his elevation far above all his family in the far future, and that was another; he was dressed well and had doubtless displayed the harmless vanity of youth in keeping the fact prominently before his brothers.  These were crimes his elders fretted over among themselves and proposed to punish when the opportunity should offer.  When they saw him coming up from the Sea of Galilee, they recognized him and were glad.  They said, “Lo, here is this dreamer—­let us kill him.”  But Reuben pleaded for his life, and they spared it.  But they seized the boy, and stripped the hated coat from his back and pushed him into the pit.  They intended to let him die there, but Reuben intended to liberate him secretly.  However, while Reuben was away for a little while, the brethren sold Joseph to some Ishmaelitish merchants who were journeying towards Egypt.  Such is the history of the pit.  And the self-same pit is there in that place, even to this day; and there it will remain until the next detachment of image-breakers and tomb desecraters arrives from the Quaker City excursion, and they will infallibly dig it up and carry it away with them.  For behold in them is no reverence for the solemn monuments of the past, and whithersoever they go they destroy and spare not.