he old shepherd to the prime-minister Joseph! I see the
old countryman seated in the palace looking around at the mirrors and
the fountains and the carved pillars, and oh! how he wishes that
Rachel, his wife, was alive and she could have come there with him to
see their son in his great house. "Oh," says the old man within
himself, "I do wish Rachel could be here to see all this!" I visited
at the farmhouse of the father of Millard Fillmore when the son was
President of the United States, and the octogenerian farmer
entertained me until eleven o'clock at night telling me what great
things he saw in his son's house at Washington, and what Daniel
Webster said to him, and how grandly Millard treated his father in the
White House. The old man's face was illumined with the story until
almost the midnight. He had just been visiting his son at the Capitol.
And I suppose it was something of the same joy that thrilled the heart
of the old shepherd as he stood in the palace of the prime-minister.
It is

A GREAT DAY WITH YOU

when your old parents came to visit you. Your little children stand
around with great wide open eyes, wondering how anybody could be so
old. The parents cannot stay many days, for they are a little
restless, and especially at nightfall, because they sleep better in
their own bed; but while they tarry you somehow feel there is a
benediction in every room in the house. They are a little feeble, and
you make it as easy as you can for them, and you realize they will
probably not visit you very often--perhaps never again. You go to
their room after they have retired at night to see if the lights are
properly put out, for the old people understand candle and lamp better
than the modern apparatus for illumination. In the morning, with real
interest in their health, you ask them how they rested last night.
Joseph in the historical scene of the text did not think any more of
his father than you do of your parents. The probability is, before
they leave your house they half spoil your children with kindnesses.
Grandfather and grandmother are more lenient and indulgent to your
children than they ever were with you. And what wonders of revelation
in the bombazine pocket of the one and the sleeve of the other!

Blessed is that home where Christian parents come to visit. Whatever
may have been the style of the architecture when they come, it is a
palace before they leave. If they visit you fifty times, the two most
me