Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/235

 something which many others in your place would no more do than you, to force  all of a sudden to bid farewell to the routine of concealment and fear of men which is not so much  fault as that of the training you have unfortunately received. Finally, I wished first to set you an example of how much simpler and easier it is to do one’s duty than only  of it.

“Now, however, after I have had the honour of supervising your work so many days longer, and of repeatedly giving you the opportunity of becoming acquainted with principles which, unless I am greatly mistaken, must triumph in the end, I should like you to adopt these. I should like you to make yours entirely that strength which is not absolutely wanting in you, but which has been weakened by disuse, and which seems indispensable in order to say always frankly and according to your best knowledge what has to be said, and to let go, therefore, altogether the unmanly hesitation to come forward openly and courageously with the truth about any matter whatsoever.

“I now, therefore, expect a simple but statement of what seems to you to be the cause of the difference in prices between  and 1853 or 1854.

“I earnestly trust that you will not look upon any sentence or phrase of this letter as written with any intention of wounding your feelings. I hope that you have become sufficiently acquainted with me to know that I say neither more nor less than I mean, and in addition I also give you the assurance that in reality my remarks apply less to personally than to the school in which you have been trained for the position of an Indian Civil Servant.

“This extenuating circumstance would, however, lose all force if, still being with me and serving the Government under my guidance, you continued to follow the bad old routine which I am opposing.

“You will have noticed that I have dispensed with the title ‘Your-very-noble-severity’: I was sick of it. Do so too, and let our ‘very-nobility’ and, when necessary, our ‘severity,’ show else-