Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/152

 the foundations of morality, virtue, religion, Christianity, and respectability?

I want you to ponder all this, Stern! Your father is an honourable firm, and I feel sure that he approves of my appealing in this way to your better feelings, also that he prefers to do business with a man who stands for virtue and religion. Yes, principles are sacred to me, and I have no hesitation in saying frankly what I mean. So you needn’t make any secret of what I am saying to you, you may freely write to your father that you are here with a reliable family, and that I am thus showing you the way of righteousness. And you may safely ask yourself what would have become of you if you had fallen into the hands of Busselinck & Waterman. There also you would have recited such verses, but there no one would have tried to influence you, for they are tricksters. You may freely write this to your father, for when principles are at stake I spare no one. There the girls would have gone along with you to the Ganges, and then you would probably now be lying there under that tree in the wet grass, whilst now, as have given you such paternal warning, you may remain with us in a respectable house. Write all this to your father, and tell him how grateful you are that you have come to us, and that I look after you so well, and that the daughter of Busselinck & Waterman has run away, and give him my kind regards, and tell him that I will drop another 1/16 per cent discount below their offer, as I can bear no scabs, who would steal the bread out of their rival’s mouth by more favourable conditions.

And do please me, when you give the readings from Shawlman’s parcel, by bringing in a little more solid matter. I have seen quotes in it with regard to the coffee-culture, for the past twenty years, from all the Residencies of Java: read a little of that kind of thing! You see, then the Rosemeyers, who are in sugar, may hear a little of what really goes on in the world. And also you must not make out that the girls and all of us are cannibals that have swallowed something of yours that’s not respectable, my dear