Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/90

 grammar, or the economic advantages of an Egyptian poultry-farm. No science was wholly foreign to him. He presurmised what he did not know, and he possessed in a high degree the faculty of applying the little he knew—everyone knows but little, and he, though perhaps knowing more than some others, was no exception to this rule—applying the little he knew in a manner which multiplied the measure of his knowledge. He was strict and orderly, and with it unusually patient, but precisely so because strictness, order and patience were naturally difficult to him, as his mind had a tendency to the fanciful. He was slow and circumspect in forming an opinion, although this scarcely seemed so to those who heard him so hastily expressing his conclusions. His impressions were too vivid for people to look upon them as enduring, and yet he often proved that they were so. All that was great and exalted drew him, and at the same time he was simple and naive as a child. He was honest, especially where honesty ran into magnanimity, and would leave unpaid hundreds that he owed, because be had given away thousands. He was witty and entertaining when he felt that his wit was understood, but otherwise distant and reserved. Warm-hearted with his friends, he made—sometimes too readily—friends of all that suffered. He was sensitive to love and affection faithful to his word once given  weak in small things, but firm to stubbornness where he deemed it worth while to show character  modest and gracious with those who recognized his mental superiority, but difficult when people attempted to dispute it  candid out of pride, and reticent by fits, when he feared that his candour might be taken for stupidity  equally susceptible to sensual as to mental pleasure  timorous and ill-spoken when he thought he was not understood, but eloquent when he felt that his words fell into receptive soil  sluggish when he was not urged by any spur from his own soul, but zealous, fiery and resolute when he was so urged  furthermore, he was affable, refined in manner, and irreproachable in his conduct: such, approximately, was Havelaar!