Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Sigal Alon and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration] NOTABLE WOMEN OF OLDEN TIME. WRITTEN FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION. PHILADELPHIA: AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 1122 CHESTNUT STREET. _Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1852, by the AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania._ _No books are published by the AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION without the sanction of the Committee of Publication, consisting of fourteen members, from the following denominations of Christians, viz. Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Reformed Dutch. Not more than three of the members can be of the same denomination, and no book can be published to which any member of the Committee shall object._ CONTENTS. PAGES THE WIFE--(SARAH) 7 THE WIFE UNLOVED--(HAGAR) 35 THE PARTIAL AND INTRIGUING MOTHER--(REBEKAH) 63 THE RIVAL SISTERS--(LEAH AND RACHEL) 89 THE AFFECTIONATE SISTER--(MIRIAM) 119 THE PROPHETESS--(DEBORAH) 171 THE ARTFUL WOMAN--(JEZEBEL) 187 THE AMBITIOUS WOMAN--(ATHALIAH) 205 THE ORPHAN QUEEN--(ESTHER) 231 THE WIFE--SARAH. [Illustration] Within a few centuries after the flood, while some who had witnessed the sin and the destruction of the antediluvian world were still living, Jehovah saw fit, in accordance with his designs of eternal wisdom, to separate Abraham from his brethren, calling upon him to leave the land of his birth and go out into a strange land, to dwell in a far country. He was to pass the rest of his days as a sojourner in a land which should be thereafter given to a people yet unborn,--to a nation which was to descend from him. Abraham was a lineal descendant of Shem, who was doubtless still living while "the father of Abraham yet abode with his kindred in the land of the Chaldees;" and from the lips of his venerable progenitor, Abraham himself may have first received the knowledge of the true God, and have learned lessons of wisdom and obedience, as he sat at his feet. Shem may have conversed with Methuselah; and Methuselah must have known Adam; and from Adam, Methuselah may have heard that history of the creation and fall, which he narrated to Shem, and which Shem may have transmitted to Abraham; and the history of the world would be thus remembered as the traditional recollections of a family, and repeated as the familiar remembrances of a single household.