Describe the beauty of the vine, and of the purple grapes hanging in clusters amid the green leaves. How sweet is this fruit to the taste! But the juice of it has a dangerous property. Once there lived a man, Noah, who had three sons. He planted a vine, plucked the grapes, but did not know the dangerous property of the juice. The second son, on seeing his father in a state of intoxication, allowed his sense of the ridiculous to overcome his feeling of reverence. But the eldest and the youngest sons acted differently. They took a garment, covered their father with it, and averted their faces so as not to see his disgrace. The moral is quite important. An intelligent child can not help detecting a fault now and then even in the best of parents. But the right course for him to take is to throw the mantle over the fault, and to turn away his face. He should say to himself: Am I the one to judge my parents--I who have been the recipient of so many benefits at their hands, and who see in them so many virtues, so much superior wisdom? By such reasoning the feeling of reverence is even deepened. The momentary superiority which the child feels serves only to bring out his general inferiority. _The Abraham Cycle._ There is a whole series of stories belonging to this group, illustrating in turn the virtues of brotherly harmony, generosity toward the weak, hospitality toward strangers, and maternal love. Abraham and Lot are near kinsmen. Their servants quarrel, and to avoid strife the former advises a separation. "If thou wilt go to the left," he says, "I will turn to the right; if thou preferrest the land to the right, I will take the left." Abraham, being the older, was entitled to the first choice, but he waived his claim. Lot chose the fairer portion, and Abraham willingly assented. "Let there be no strife between us, for we be brethren." The lesson is, that the older and wiser of two brothers or kinsmen may well yield a part of his rights for harmony's sake. Abraham's conduct toward the King of Sodom is an instance of generosity. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah may be introduced by describing the Dead Sea and the surrounding scene of desolation. The moral lies in the circumstance that ill treatment of strangers brought down the doom. Hospitality toward strangers is one of the shining virtues of the Old Testament heroes. Even at the present day strangers are still despised and ridiculed by the vulgar, their foreign manners, language, and habits seeming contemptible; the lesson of hospitality is not yet superfluous.