No, no; all this I do not expect. The excess of misery at home overmasters your feeling of sympathy for what is far off. Was there not yesterday but little business going on at the Exchange, and does not the glutting of the coffee-market threaten a reduction in price?
“Don’t write such nonsense to your papa, Stern,” I said, and perhaps a little passionately, for I can’t bear untruth; that has always been a fixed principle with me. [[310]]I wrote that evening to old Mr. Stern, telling him to beware of false reports.
The reader understands what I have again suffered in listening to the last chapters. Was I not right when I said that Shawlman had made them all mad with his parcel? Would you recognise in this writing business of Stern——and Fred too helps, that is certain——young men that were educated in a respectable house?
What foolish sallies are these against a sickness which reveals itself in a desire for a country seat? Is that aimed at me? Am not I allowed to go to Driebergen as soon as Fred is a broker? And who speaks of dysentery in the company of mothers and daughters? It is a fixed principle with me always to remain quiet, for I think it useful in business; but I must confess, that it has often cost me a great deal to listen to all the nonsense that Stern reads. What does he mean? What must be the end of all this? When shall we hear anything substantial? Of what interest is it for me whether Havelaar keeps his garden clean or not, and whether those people enter in front of the house or at the back? At Busselinck and Waterman’s one has to go through a small entrance, near an oil warehouse, where it is always abominably dirty.——And then those tiresome buffaloes. Why do they want buffaloes, those black fellows?… I never had a buffalo, and yet I am contented;—there are men who are always complaining. And as regards that scoffing at forced labour, I [[311]]perceive that he had not heard that sermon of Dominé Wawelaar’s, otherwise he would know how useful labour is in the extension of the kingdom of God. It is true, he is a Lutheran.…
To be sure, if I could have known how he would write the book, which was to be so important to all coffee-brokers—and others—I would rather have done it myself. But he is supported by the Rosemeyers, who trade in sugar, and this makes him so bold. I said plainly, for I am honest in those things, that we can dispense with the history of that man Saïdjah; but just then, all at once, Louise Rosemeyer began to cry. It appears that Stern had told her that there would be something about love in it, and girls are mad after that. Yet this would not have made me yield, if the Rosemeyers had not told me that they would like to be acquainted with Stern’s father. Of course, through the father they will arrive at the uncle, who trades in sugar. If I am now too much for common-sense, and against Stern junior, I get the appearance as if I would keep them away from him, and that is not at all the case, for they trade in sugar.
I don’t understand what Stern means by what he writes. There are always discontented people, and does it become him who enjoys so much good in Holland——only this week my wife gave him camomile tea——to scoff at the Government? Does he mean to excite public discontent? Does he want to become Governor-General? He is self-conceited [[312]]enough for that. I told him the other day that he spoke very bad Dutch. “Oh, that is nothing,” said he, “it seems that a Governor is very seldom sent over who understands the language of the country.”
What shall I do with such a self-conceited fellow? He has not the least respect for my experience. When I told him this week that I had been a broker for seventeen years, he cited Busselinck and Waterman, who have been brokers for eighteen years, “and,” said he, “they have one year’s more experience.” Thus he caught me, for I must confess, because I like truth, that Busselinck and Waterman have little knowledge of business, and that they are old women and sneaks. Mary too is led astray. Only this week——it was her turn to read at breakfast, we were about to have the history of Lot——when she suddenly stopped, and refused to proceed. My wife, who likes religion as much as I do, tried gently to persuade her to obedience, because it does not become a modest girl to be so obstinate. All in vain. Thereupon I, as a father, was obliged to scold her with much severity, because she spoiled, by her obstinacy, the comfort of the breakfast, which always has a bad influence on the whole day. But nothing would help, and she went so far as to say, that she would rather be beaten till she was dead than proceed with reading. I have punished her with three days’ confinement to her room on coffee and bread; I hope that it will do her good. To make this punishment [[313]]severe, at the same time a moral lesson, I have ordered her to copy the chapter which she would not read ten times, and I have treated her with this severity above all, because I have perceived that she has, during the last few days—whether from Stern or not I do not know—taken up ideas which appear to me to be dangerous to morality, to which my wife and I are so much attached. I heard her sing, for instance, a French song—by Béranger, I believe—in which the poet pities a poor old beggar, who in her youth sung at a theatre, and yesterday at breakfast she had no stays on——Mary, I mean—that was really not respectable.
I have likewise to confess that Fred brought home little good from the prayer-meeting. I had been much pleased with his sitting so quietly in church. He did not move, and always looked at the pulpit, but afterwards I heard that Betsy Rosemeyer was sitting near it. I said nothing about it, for one must not be too severe towards young people, and the Rosemeyers are a respectable firm. They have given their eldest daughter, who married Bruggeman the druggist, something very nice, and therefore I believe that this will keep Fred away from the Wester Market, which is very gratifying to me, because I am so attached to morality.
But I am grieved to see that this does not prevent Fred from hardening his heart, like Pharaoh, who was less guilty, because he had no father to show him continually [[314]]the right path, for the Scriptures do not speak of old Pharaoh. Dominé Wawelaar complains of his conceit——I mean Fred’s——at catechism, and he seems—again from Shawlman’s parcel,—to have derived this self-conceit, which drives the conscientious Wawelaar almost mad. It is touching how the worthy man, who often lunches with us, endeavours to work on Fred’s feelings, and how the scamp is always ready with new questions, which show the perversity of his heart. It all comes from that accursed book of Shawlman’s. With tears of emotion on his cheeks, the zealous servant of the Gospel endeavours to move him to turn away the eyes from the wisdom of men, to be introduced into the mysteries of the wisdom of God. With gentleness and meekness he prays him not to throw away the bread of eternal life, and to fall while acting thus into the clutches of Satan, who, with his angels, inhabits the fire prepared for him to all eternity. “Oh,” said he yesterday——Wawelaar, I mean——“O my young friend, open now eyes and ears, and hear and see what the Lord gives you to see and hear by my mouth. Pay attention to the evidences of the saints who have died for the true faith. Look at Stephen, sinking down under the stones that crush him, see how he still looks to heaven, and how he ceases not to sing psalms.…”