He told his brothers that he would be the tallest sheaf in the field and that they as lesser sheaves would come and make obeisance before him. He went still further and included his elders and betters in that general bowing down. He said, "Behold the sun and moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me." He saw himself as the centre of the whole solar system and the rest of his family revolving about him as minor satellites. This day-dream of the ambitious young man was too much even for his indulgent father. "And Jacob rebuked him for his dream." There you have all the necessary ingredients for a family explosion. When any young man is a favourite son, and a talebearer, and is filled to the eyes with self-conceit, he has in him the sulphur, the saltpeter, and the charcoal which enter into the composition of that sort of gunpowder which is liable to blow him up. You do not wonder that his brothers hated him. You are not surprised that when they saw him coming across the fields at Dothan they said with a sneer, "Behold, the dreamer cometh!" We might naturally expect that they would conspire against him. They proposed to see whether or not this conceited young tattler would become the tallest sheaf in the field and the centre of the whole solar system there in little Canaan. He had himself to thank for getting in wrong with his associates. He was not showing the qualities which make for peace and joy and advancement. But in the second place he was sent early in life to the school of adversity. The place where he "prepared" was not much like "The Hill" or Hotchkiss; it bore no resemblance whatever to Andover or Exeter. He took all the grades in the commonest of all common schools. He was under the tuition of struggle and difficulty. He was a Freshman, then a Sophomore, a Junior and a Senior in the University of Experience, where the college colours are always "black and blue" because the lessons are learned by hard knocks. He learned obedience by the things that he suffered. He had the conceit taken out of him by being knocked down. He knew the meaning of the word "discipline," so that he could have spelled it and parsed it forward and backwards and crosswise. He was tried in these three ways: first, by being sold as a slave boy into Egypt. His father sent him out to Dothan to see how his brothers were faring with their flocks. When they saw him coming across the plain they said, "Behold the dreamer! Let us cast him into a pit and see what will become of his dreams." His brothers seized him and threw him into a deep well, where there was no water, intending to let him die in that horrible way. But when a company of Ishmaelites came along on their way to Egypt, a happier thought struck those men. Judah, who was always a thrifty soul, said, "What profit is it if we slay our brother and conceal his blood?" There is no money in murder. "Let us sell him to the Ishmaelites."