Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/140

 unpardonable neglect of duty towards Holland in general and the coffee-brokers in particular, ay, even towards the Javanese themselves, in not either changing that soil—after all, the Javanese have nothing else to do—or, if they think this cannot be done, sending the people that live there to other parts, where the soil good for coffee.

I never say anything that I have not thoroughly considered, and I venture to say in this case I am speaking with intimate knowledge, as I have maturely reflected on the matter, especially since I heard the sermon of the Reverend Twaddler at the prayer-service for conversion of the heathen.

That was last Wednesday night. You must know reader, that I scrupulously fulfil my duties as a father, and that the moral training of my children is a thing very near to my heart. Now as for some time Frits has shown something in his tone and manners that doesn’t please me—it all comes out of that confounded parcel!—I gave him a sound lecture that day and said:

“Frits, I am not satisfied with you! I have always pointed out the right way to you, and yet you will take the crooked path. You are pedantic and troublesome, and you write verses, and you have given Betsy Rosemeyer a kiss. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom, so you must not kiss the Rosemeyers, and you must not be so pedantic. Immorality leads to perdition, my boy. Read the Scriptures, and just look at that Shawlman. He strayed from the ways of the Lord: now he is poor, and lives in a miserable little apartment there you have the consequences of immorality and bad conduct! He wrote unbecoming articles in the Indépendance, and he dropped the Aglaia. That’s what one comes to, when one is wise in his own eyes. Now he doesn’t even know the time, and his little boy wears only half a pair of trousers. Remember that your body is a temple of God, and that your father has always had to work hard for a living—it’s the truth!—therefore lift up your eyes to heaven, and see that you grow up to be a respectable broker by the time I retire to Driebergen. And do