Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/338

 there had been so much wrong. So having paid attention to all, I knew immediately what to think of all that grumbling in 1856.

Opposite to us there lived a young woman whose cousin has a Toko in the East Indies, as they call a shop there. If all was so very bad as Stern represents, she would likewise know something about it, and yet it seems that she is very contented, for I never hear her complain. On the contrary, she says that her cousin lives there at a country seat, and that he is member of the consistory, and that he has sent her a cigar-case ornamented with peacocks’-feathers, which he had himself made of bamboo. All this shows distinctly how unfounded all these complaints about misgovernment are. Likewise it is clear that for a person who will behave properly, there is still something to gain in that country, and that when this Shawlman was there, he was idle, conceited, and sickly, otherwise he would not have come home so very poor; to walk about here without a greatcoat. And the cousin of the young woman who lives opposite us is not the only one who has made his fortune in the East Indies. In the club I see so many persons who have been there, and who are very nicely dressed. But it is plain one must pay attention to one’s business yonder as well as here. In Java pigeons will not fly into anybody’s mouth ready roasted; there must be work, and whoever will not work is poor, and remains so as a matter of course.