Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/54

 —with such feeling, and that he would rather be silent than see his words held in the debasing fetters of commonplace. I certainly thought this very silly on Stern’s part, but my profession comes first, and the Old Man is a good firm. So we settled:


 * 1) That he should supply every week a couple of chapters for my book;
 * 2) That I should change nothing in his writing;
 * 3) That Frits should correct the grammar;
 * 4) That I should from time to time write a chapter myself, to give the book an appearance of solidity;
 * 5) That the title should be: The coffee-sales of the Netherlands Trading Company:
 * 6) That Mary should make a neat copy for press, but that we should have patience with her whenever the laundry things came home;
 * 7) That the finished chapters should every week be read aloud at the party;
 * 8) That all immorality should be avoided;
 * 9) That my name should not appear on the title-page, as I am a broker;
 * 10) That Stern should be authorized to publish a German, French, and English translation of my book, because—so he maintained—such works are better understood in foreign countries than with us;
 * 11) (Stern emphatically insisted on this.) That I should send Shawlman a ream of paper, a gross of pens and a bottle of ink.

I acquiesced in everything, as my book was very urgent. The following day Stern had finished his first chapter, and there you see, reader, the answer to the question how a coffee-broker—Last & Co., Laurier Canal, No. 37—comes to be writing a book that resembles a novel.

No sooner, however, had Stern set to work, than he was confronted by obstacles. Besides the difficulty among so many ma-