Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/254

 I don't in the least understand Stern’s object with his scribbling. There are always discontented people, and surely it is not nice of him, when he enjoys so many benefits in Holland—only this week my wife made him some camomile-tea—to abuse the Government! Does he wish in that way to stimulate the general discontent? Does want to become Governor-General? He is conceited enough for that I mean to want to. I asked him this the day before yesterday, and told him candidly that his Dutch was still so very deficient! “Oh, that is no difficulty,” he answered. “It appears to be the exception that a Governor-General is sent out there who understands the language of the country.” What on earth can I do with such a wiseacre? He has not the slightest respect for my experience. When I told him this week that I had been a broker these seventeen years, and had been on ’Change for twenty years, he quoted Busselinck & Waterman, who have been brokers for eighteen years, and, he said, “they therefore have one year more experience.” And there he had me, for I have to admit, as I am wedded to the truth, that Busselinck & Waterman know little about the business, and that they are tricksters.

Marie is also getting wrong-headed. Just fancy, this week—it was her turn to read aloud at breakfast, and we had got to the story of Lot—she suddenly stopped and refused to read on. My wife, who is just as keen on religion as I, tried with gentleness to persuade her to be obedient, as of course it is not proper for a modest girl to be so self-willed. All in vain! Then I, as her father, had to scold her with great severity, as her obstinacy disturbed the edification of breakfast, a thing which always reacts badly on the whole day. But nothing was any use, and she went so far as to say that she would rather be struck dead than read on. I punished her with three days’ detention in her room with nothing but coffee and bread, and I trust it will do her good. In order that the punishment might at the same time tend to her moral improvement, I ordered her to copy out the chapter she would not read, ten times, and that I proceeded to such severity was more particularly be-