eternal life, and so to fall into the clutches of Satan, who dwells with his angels in the fire which has been prepared for him unto all eternity. “Oh!” he said yesterday—I mean Twaddler—“oh, my young friend, do open your eyes and your ears, and hear and see what the Lord gives you to see and to hear from my lips. Mark the testimony of the Saints who died for the true faith! Observe Saint Stephen, as he sinks under the cobblestones that crush him! See how his eye still seeks heaven, and how his tongue still sings psalms. . .”
“I’d rather have thrown some back at them!” Frits said. Reader, what am I to do with that boy?
A moment after Twaddler started again, for he is a zealous servant, and does not desist from his labours. “Oh!” he said, “my young friend, do open . . .” the introduction was the same as before. “But,” he continued, “can you remain insensible to the reflection of what must become of you if once you are counted among the goats on the left side . . .”
Here the rapscallion burst out into loud laughter—I mean Frits—and Marie also began to laugh. I even thought I traced something like a laugh on my wife’s face. But now I thought it time to support Twaddler, and I punished Frits with a fine from his money-box to be paid to the Mission Society.
Alas, reader, all this moves me deeply. And how can I, suffering these pangs, amuse myself listening to stories about buffaloes and Javanese? What is a buffalo compared with the salvation of Frits? What concern of mine are the affairs of those far-off people, when I fear that Frits by his unbelief will ruin my own affairs, and that he will never be a solid broker? For Twaddler himself has said that God ordains everything in such manner that orthodoxy leads to wealth. “Just see,” he said, “is there not much wealth in Holland? That is the result of faith. Is there not in France continually murder and manslaughter? That is because there they are Catholics. Are not the Javanese poor? They are heathens. The longer the Dutch are connected with the Javanese, the more wealth
