Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/259

 quarters. When I was married, I was at The Hague myself, and visited the Maurits-house with my wife. I was in touch there with every rank of Society, for I saw the State Treasurer driving by, and we bought flannel together in the Veene-street—I and my wife, I mean—and I did not anywhere see the least sign of dissatisfaction with the Government. The lady in the shop looked thriving and contented, and so when in 1848 some people tried to make us believe that at The Hague things were not all as they should be, I spoke my opinion about this dissatisfaction quite frankly at our party. I was given credit for knowing, for everyone was aware that I spoke from experience. And on the journey back the conductor on the stage-coach played on his horn the old song “Live gladly,” and surely the man would not have done this if there had been so much to complain of. In this way I took notice of everything, and therefore knew at once what to think of all this grousing in 1848.

Opposite us lives a woman whose nephew has a toko in the East: that’s what they call a shop over there. Now if everything was going as badly as Stern makes out, surely she would know something about it, and yet it appears that the woman is quite satisfied with business, for I never hear her complain. On the contrary, she says her nephew lives in a country villa there, and he is a member of the vestry, and he has sent her a peacock-feather cigar-case, which he made himself out of bamboo. All this, I should think, shows plainly how unfounded are all those complaints about bad Government. One may also see from it that anyone who will look after things may earn a good deal in that country, and that therefore this Shawlman even there was lazy, pedantic, and sickly, else he would not have returned so poor, and be now walking about here without a winter coat. And the nephew of that woman opposite is not the only one who has made a fortune in the East. In “Poland” I see a good many men who have been