Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/93



Controller Verbrugge was a good man. When you saw him sitting there in his blue cloth dress-coat, embroidered with oak and orange branches on collar and cuffs, you could not have found a better type of the Dutchman in India, who, by the way, is quite different from the Dutchman in Holland. Slow as long as there was nothing to be done; far from that fussiness, which in Europe is mistaken for zeal, but zealous where business required attention; plain, but cordial to those around him; communicative, willing to help, and hospitable; very polite without stiffness; susceptible of good impressions; honest and sincere, without wishing to be a martyr to these qualities;—in short, he was a man, who, as they say, could make himself at home anywhere, yet without making any one think of calling the century by his name—an honour which, in truth, he did not desire.

He was sitting in the middle of the ‘pendoppo,’ near