Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/138

 character.” She approved of his entertaining the orphans of all the asylums in Amsterdam with gingerbread and almond-milk, and loading them with playthings. She perfectly understood that he had paid the hotel-bill of that family of poor singers, who wanted to go back to their country, but did not like to leave the goods behind, including the harp, and the violin, and the violoncello, which they wanted for their poor profession. She could not disapprove his bringing to her the girl, who in the evening had accosted him in the street, giving her food and lodging, and not pronouncing the “Go and sin no more!” before he had placed it in her power not to sin. She approved of her Max causing the piano to be brought back to the parlour of the father of a family, whom she heard say “how sorry he was that by his bankruptcy the girls were deprived of their music.” She quite understood that her Max had redeemed the family of slaves at Menado who were so intensely afflicted at having to mount upon the auctioneer’s table. She thought it quite a matter of course that Max gave other horses in return for those that had been ridden to death by the officers of the Bayonnaise. She did not object to his lodging at Menado and at Amboyna all the survivors of the shipwrecked American whalers, and thought himself far above sending in an innkeeper’s bill to the American Government. She understood how it was that the officers of every man-of-war that arrived lodged for the most part