Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/52

 will perceive, reader, that I am a man of the world. I made Fred hand over to me “the beautiful poem” of yesterday evening, and very soon saw the line which caused Betsy to crumble her bread. They speak there of a child on the breast of its mother,—I say nothing of that;—but: “which scarcely left the mother’s womb,”—that I disap­proved,—to speak about that, I mean,—so did my wife. Mary is thirteen. Of “cabbage” and such things we do not speak; but to give all in this way its right name is not necessary, as I am a great lover of morality. So I made Fred, who knew it by heart, promise that he would not repeat it again,—at least not before he was member of Doctrina, because no young girls come there,—and then I put it in my writing-desk, I mean the verse. But I wanted to know whether there was anything else of an offensive nature in the parcel; I began to look and to inspect everything. I could not read all, for a great deal was written in foreign languages which I did not understand, but at last I caught sight of a treatise entitled “Account of the Coffee Culture in the Residency of Menado.” My heart leaped for joy, because I am a coffee-broker, at No. 37 Laurier Canal, and “Menado” is a very good mark. So this Shawlman, who made immoral verses, had been in the Coffee trade. I looked at the parcel with quite a different eye. I saw treatises in it which I did not completely understand, but they showed a knowledge of business. There were