Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/102

 hampered from youth, but that doubtless in general the slender scientific equipment of the lip-lap hinders his being placed on an equality with the European even when would perhaps deserve to be ranked above some European or another as regards culture or scientific or artistic attainments.

In this also there is nothing new. It was, for instance, part of the policy of William the Conqueror to raise the most insignificant Norman above the most civilized Saxon, and every Norman would appeal to the superiority of the Normans, in order to assert his personality even where he would have been entirely the inferior the influence of his race as the ruling party.

Such a state of affairs naturally creates a more or less forced position, which nothing could remove except the better-informed, more broad-minded conceptions and measures of a wise Government.

It is obvious that the European, who in this relationship is on the winning side, feels himself perfectly comfortable in such artificial predominance. But it is often ludicrous enough to hear some person who largely drew his culture and grammar from the Rotterdam Sandstreet, laugh at the lip-lap because he makes a glass of water or a government masculine, and sun or moon neuter.

A lip-lap may be cultured, well-educated, or scholarly—and there are such!—but no sooner has the European who malingered in order to stay away from the ship on which he washed the plates, and who bases his claims to good manners on “’Scuse me” and “How are yer?” risen to the position of head of the commercial venture which made such “huge” profits out of indigo in 1800 odd nay, long before he became owner of the toko (booth) in which he sells hams and fowling-pieces—no sooner has this European noticed that the most cultured lip-lap even has a difficulty in distinguishing between h and g, than he sneers at the stupidity of the man who does not know the difference between hot gas and has got.

But to unlearn that sneer he would have to know that in Arabic