Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/119

 on the head of our child! He has sent me to a place where not all the labour has been accomplished, and He has judged me worthy of being there before the harvest time. For the joy is not in cutting the paddy: the joy is in cutting the paddy one has planted. And the soul of man does not grow through the wages, but through the labour that earns the wages.’ And I said to her: ‘Allah has given us a child that will say some day: “Do you know that I am son?” And then there will be those in the land who will greet him with love, and who will lay their hands on his head, and will say: “Sit down to our meal, and stay in our house, and partake of all we have, for I knew your father.”’

“Chiefs of Lebak, there is much good labour to be accomplished in your district!

“Tell me, is not the husbandman poor? Does not often your paddy ripen to feed those who have not planted? Are there not many wrongs 1n your land? Is not the number of your children small?

“Is there not shame in your souls when the dweller in Bandoong, that lies yonder to the Eastward, visits your district and asks: ‘Where are all the villages, and where the husbandmen? And why do I not hear the gamlang, that speaks gladness with its mouth of brass, nor the pounding of the paddy by your daughters?’

“Does it not fill you with bitterness, when you travel hence unto the south coast and see the mountains that bear no water on their sides, or the plains where never a buffalo drew the plough?

“Yes, yes, I tell you that your soul and mine are sad thereat; and for that very reason we are grateful to Allah that He has given us the power to labour here.

“For in this land we have acres for many, though the dwellers here are few. And it is not the rain that is lacking, for the tops of the mountains suck the clouds from heaven to earth. And it is not everywhere that rocks refuse room to the root, for in many places the soil is soft and fertile, and cries out for the grain that she will return to us as an ear bent with fruitful weight. And there is no