Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/305



dulgence I had many reasons, and, amongst others, this, that I thought it unjust to exact suddenly from you what many others in your place would have readily afforded; to force you to say farewell in such a hurry to a course of reserve and timorousness that is not your fault, but that of the training which you have received. Finally, I wished to give you first an example how much simpler and easier it is to do one’s duty than only. But now that I have had the honour of seeing you so long under my orders, and after having continually given you occasion to make yourself acquainted with principles, which, unless I err, will triumph at last, I should wish that you accepted them, that you would make your own the power which is not wanting, but merely in disuse, to tell me to the best of your knowledge what you have to say, and that you would bid adieu at once and for ever to that unmanly fear of telling the plain truth.

“I expect, therefore, a simple but complete report of what seems to you to be the cause of the difference in price between 1854 and 1856. I sincerely hope that you will not consider any phrase of this letter meant to hurt you. I trust that you understand me well enough, to know that I say neither more nor less than I mean, and, moreover, I give you the assurance that my observations refer less to you than to the school in which you were trained for an Indian functionary. Yet this ‘