Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/179

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160
Max Havelaar

money enough, even if he does not like to become a broker. Only think that wickedness is always punished: look again at that Shawlman, who has no winter overcoat, and who looks like a clown. Pay attention when you are at church, and you must not fidget so much on your bench, as if you were annoyed; and do not wait for girls when the service is over, for that destroys all chance of edification. Do not make Mary laugh when I am reading the Bible at breakfast; all this should not be in a respectable household.

“You have also drawn caricatures on Bastianus’ desk when he was not at the office on account of the gout, which continually plagues him,—this keeps them in the office away from their work; and you may read in the Word of God that such follies end in ruin. This Shawlman did the same when he was young: when a child he beat a Greek on the Wester Market; now he is idle, conceited, and sickly. Do not always make fun with Stern; his father is rich; and do as if you did not see it, when he makes wry faces to the bookkeeper, and when he is busy with verses outside the office. Tell him that he had better write to his father that he likes our Company very much, and that he is so contented here, and that Mary has embroidered slippers for him. Ask him, if he thinks that his father will go to Busselinck and Waterman, and tell him that they are low fellows. Do you see that you will in this way bring him into the right path? you owe