Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/258

 at the edge there was a fringe. He didn’t even have his shawl now, and looked as if we were in mid-summer. And yet he still seems to possess a kind of pride, for he gave something to a poor woman who was sitting on the lock—Frits says bridge; but when the thing is stone without a wooden span, I call it a lock —and anyone who has so little himself, and then still gives to another, commits a sin. Besides, I never give in the street, this is one of my principles; for I always say, when I see those poor people: Who knows but that it may be their own fault, and I should do wrong to encourage them in their perversity? On Sundays I give twice: once for the poor and once for the Church. That’s as it ought to be! I don’t know whether Shawlman saw me, but I went on quickly, and looked upward, and thought of the justice of God, who of course would not let him go about like this without a winter coat if he had behaved better and was not lazy, pedantic, and sickly.

Now as to my book, I really owe the reader an apology for the unpardonable manner in which Stern abuses our contract. I must admit that I look forward with a heavy heart to the next party and the love-story of that Saïdyah. The reader knows already what healthy ideas I have about love you may remember my opinion about that excursion to the Ganges. That young girls find that kind of thing interesting, I can quite well understand; but to me it is inexplicable that men of a certain age can listen to such tomfoolery without disgust. I feel certain that during the next meeting I shall find the triolet of my solitaire-game.

I shall try to hear nothing about that Saïdyah, and I hope the man will soon get married, at least if is the hero of the love-story. It is rather kind of Stern to have warned me in advance that it will be a monotonous story. As soon as he starts with something else I shall listen again. But all this condemnation of the Government bores me almost as much as love-stories. One can see in everything that Stern is young and has little experience. If one wishes to examine things properly, one has to see them at close