Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/36

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And they are quite right.

He calls that “encouraged”!

I have never heard that he was in business.

And his name was written underneath. But I do not mention it, as I am not fond of getting a man talked about.

Dear reader, you can imagine how I was taken aback, when it was suddenly suggested that I should be raised to the position of verse-broker. I feel sure that if “Shawlman”—I think I shall just give him that name—had seen me in the daytime, he would not have addressed such a request to me. For then gentility and respectability cannot be hidden. But it was in the evening, so I don’t feel concerned about it. It is self-evident that I’ll have noth-