Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/187

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168
Max Havelaar

from the terrible future which Dominé Wawelaar so eloquently described. A lady fainted when he spoke of that black child; perhaps she has a little boy of dark features——such are women!

And should not I insist upon labour,—I, who think from morning till evening only about business? Is not even that book, which Stern makes me dislike so much, a proof how good my intentions are for the welfare of the country, and how I like to sacrifice all for that? And when I have to labour so hard, I who was baptized (in the Amstel Kirk), is it not lawful to exact of the Javanese, who has still to earn his salvation, that he should employ his hands?

When that Society—[mean No. 5 (e.)]—is formed, I will join it, and endeavour to engage the Rosemeyers to join it too, because the sugar-refiners have also an interest in it, though I do not believe that they are very particular in their ideas,—I mean the Rosemeyers, for they have a Roman Catholic servant. In any case, I shall do my duty. That I promised myself while returning home with Fred from the prayer-meeting. In my house the Lord shall be served, I will take care of that; and with the more zeal, the more I perceive how wisely all has been settled, how good the ways are by which we are conducted to the hand of God, how He wills to preserve us for eternal and temporal life——for that ground at Lebak can be very well fitted for coffee-culture.