It was my good luck, in the first place, to be born after her, instead of before; in the second place, to inherit, from the family stock, that particular assortment of gifts which was sure to mark me for special attentions, exemptions, and privileges; and as fortune always smiles on good fortune, it has ever been my luck, in the third place, to find something good in my idle hand--whether a sunbeam, or a loving heart, or a congenial task--whenever, on turning a corner, I put out my hand to see what my new world was like; while my sister, dear, devoted creature, had her hands so full of work that the sunbeam slipped, and the loving comrade passed out of hearing before she could straighten from her task, and all she had of the better world was a scented zephyr fanned in her face by the irresistible closing of a door.
Perhaps Esau has been too severely blamed for selling his birthright for a mess of pottage.

The lot of the firstborn is not necessarily to be envied.

The firstborn of a well-to-do patriarch, like Isaac, or of a Rothschild of to-day, inherits, with his father's flocks and slaves and coffers, a troop of cares and responsibilities; unless he be a man without a sense of duty, in which case we are not supposed to envy him.

The firstborn of an indigent father inherits a double measure of the disadvantages of poverty,--a joyless childhood, a guideless youth, and perhaps a mateless manhood, his own life being drained to feed the young of his father's begetting.

If we cannot do away with poverty entirely, we ought at least to abolish the institution of primogeniture.