Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/25

 of my gold chain and best coat. Yes! many persons become corrupted by the stage, much more than by novels, for seeing is believing. With tinsel and lace cut out in paper, all looks so very attractive, that is to say, for children and men who are not accustomed to busi­ness. And even when they want to represent poverty, their representation is generally a lie. A girl whose father has become a bankrupt, works to support her family. Very well; you see her on the stage, sewing, knitting, or embroidering. Now, do count the stitches which she makes during a whole act. She talks, she sighs, she runs to the window, she does everything except work. Surely the family that can live by such work needs very little. This girl is, of course, the heroine. She has pushed some seducers down-stairs, and cries continually, “Oh, mother, mother!” and thus she repre­sents Virtue. A nice virtue indeed, which takes a year in making a pair of stockings! Does not all this serve to give you false ideas of virtue, and of “labour for daily bread?” All folly and lies! Then her first lover, who was formerly a copying-clerk, but is now immensely rich, returns suddenly, and marries her. Lies again. He who has money does not marry a bankrupt’s daughter. You think that such a scene will do on the stage, as an excep­tional case, but the audience will mistake the exception for the rule, and thus become demoralized by accustoming themselves to applaud on the stage, that which in the