Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/290

 well enough to escape the sharks that are so numerous there? I find such a coquetting with good-nature more difficult to believe than good-nature itself.

I call you to witness that have known Havelaar—if you are not stiffened by the cold of winter, and dead or dried up and withered by the heat yonder, under the Equator!—I summon you to testify of his heart, all of you who have known him! Now, above all, I summon you with confidence, because you need no more seek for the spot where the cord must be hooked in to pull him down ever so little.

Yet, however inopportunely it may appear, I will here insert a few lines from his pen, which will, perhaps, make such witnesses superfluous, Max was once far from wife and child. He had to leave her behind in the Indies, and was in Germany. With the quickness which I ascribe to him, but which I won’t defend if attacked, he mastered the language of the country where he had been for a few months. Here are the lines which picture his love for his household:—