In the country where Jacob lived, the people did not live in houses like ours, but in tents. Tents are made by fixing long poles in the ground, and spreading over them canvas or coarse linen cloth, which falls to the ground on every side, so as to make a room with canvas roof and sides. Sometimes these rooms are square, and sometimes round, with one tall pole in the middle.

It was a custom in Eastern countries for a husband and wife to have separate tents.

Can you guess why the people in that country lived in tents instead of houses? It was because they had to move about very often to find food for their flocks, and they wished to take these tents with them. They could not well pull down a house made of brick or stone and take it from place to place with them, but they could very easily take the tent-poles out of the ground and roll the canvas up, and carry them wherever they liked. Even now the people who live in many parts of the country where Jacob lived, and in some other countries, have tents instead of houses because they find them better suited to their wants.

I have told you about Jacob and his sons, and how they lived, because it will help you to understand better what I shall now tell you about Joseph.

CHAPTER II.

JOSEPH'S DREAMS.

SOMETIMES When Joseph went out with his brothers, he saw that their conduct was not good, and after he came home he would speak to his father Jacob about it. This made his brothers hate and behave unkindly to him; and they disliked him the more because he generally pleased his father by his good conduct, and made his father love him better than any of them.

One day, Jacob made Joseph a present of a fine coat of many colours: perhaps it was very smart and gay, for the people in that country still like clothes striped with very bright colours.

Now when Joseph's brothers saw this fine new coat, they were displeased, and grumbled at their father, and spoke roughly to Joseph about it. They felt that Joseph was better than they were, and envy made them angry with him. This was very wrong of them, for they ought to have been glad that their younger brother Joseph was good, and pleased their father; and to have liked him the better for it.

Soon afterwards, Joseph had a wonderful dream, and he told it to his brothers, and said to them, "Hear, I pray you, the dream which I have dreamed: for, behold, we were binding sheaves (of corn) in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance (or bowed down) to my sheaf."

When his brothers heard this, they knew that it meant that they were one day to bow down to him, as their sheaves had bowed down to his sheaf; and they said, "What! are we to bow down to you, as our sheaves of corn did in the dream? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words."

And Joseph had another dream, with a meaning very much like that of the first. This time he dreamed that he saw the sun and the moon and eleven stars bow down And he told the dream to his father and

before him. his brothers.

When his father heard it, he was astonished, and rebuked him, and said, "What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?" But his father did not envy or hate him, as his brothers had done.

Jacob and his sons lived at this time in the Vale of