Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/19



a coffee-broker, and live at 37, Laurier Canal. I am not in the habit of writing novels, or things of that kind, and I have, therefore, been a long time making up my mind to buy two extra reams of paper and start on the work that you, dear reader, have just taken up, and that you must read if you are a coffee-broker, or if you are anything else. Not only have I never written anything that resembled a novel, I do not even like reading things of that sort, as I am a business man. For years I have asked myself, what is the use of them, and I am amazed at the impudence with which a poet or story-teller dares try to stuff you with crammers about events that never took place, and, more often than not, could not take place. If in line—I am a coffee-broker and live at 37, Laurier Canal—I furnished particulars to a principal (a principal is a man who sells coffee) which contained but a small part of the untruths that are the main body of poems and novels, he would at once transfer his business to Busselinck & Waterman. They are coffee-brokers also, but you need not know their address. I, therefore, take very good care not to write novels or furnish other untruthful statements. And I may say that I have always noticed that people who mix themselves up in such business usually come to a bad end. I am forty-three years of age, I have been on the Exchange for twenty years, and I can therefore present my credentials, if a man of experience is required. I have seen a mighty lot of firms go down! And usually, on thinking over the causes, I came to the conclusion that they lay in the wrong start given to most of them in their youth.

I only say: truth and common sense, and I stick to it. Naturally I make an exception on behalf of the Holy Word. The error starts