And fewer and fewer grow the leaves under your right thumb, and my hope for that embrace becomes fainter and fainter:
“Yes, truly, I reckoned on a tear!”
And you have finished the novel to “where they have met each other,” and you say, yawning—[“that is another expression of true eloquence”]—
“Not much——it is such a book as is often written now-a-days!”
But don’t you know, monster, tiger, European reader! don’t you know that you spent an hour in biting my soul as a tooth-pick; in gnawing and chewing the flesh and bone of your species? Man-eater! my soul was in that which you have ruminated on as once eaten grass. That was my heart that you swallowed there as a dainty bit, for I put my heart and my soul into that book: and so many tears fell on that manuscript, and my blood went back from the veins to the heart, as I wrote on, and I gave you all this; and you bought this for a few pence—and you say “Humph!”
The reader understands that I do not speak here about my book.
So that I will only say, that I quote the words of Abraham Blankaart[1]—— [[156]]
“Who is that Abraham Blankaart?” asked Louise Rosemeyer, and Fred told her, which gave me much pleasure; for this gave me an opportunity to get up and make an end of the reading—for this evening at least. You know that I am a coffee-broker—[No. 37 Laurier Canal]—and that I live for my profession; you will therefore be able to judge how little pleased I was with the work of Stern. I had hoped it would be about coffee, and he gave us——yes, Heaven knows what! He has already had our attention during three parties, and, what is worse, the Rosemeyers like it. I make a remark, he appeals to Louise. Her approbation, he says, is dearer to him than all the coffee in the world, and moreover, when my heart burns, etc.—[look at that tirade, page so-and-so, or rather don’t look for it at all.] There I am, and don’t know what to do! That parcel of Shawlman’s is a true Trojan horse; even Fred is corrupted by it. He helped Stern, as I perceive, for “Abraham Blankaart” is too Dutch for a German. Both are so very self-sufficient that I am truly perplexed with the matter. Worse still, I made an agreement with Gaafzuiger for the publishing of a book about the Coffee-Auctions. All Holland is waiting for it, and there Stern goes quite another way. Yesterday he said: “Be at your ease; different roads lead to Rome: wait for the end of the introduction”—[is all this only “introduction?”]—[[157]]“I promise you that all will come down to coffee,—coffee, coffee, and nothing but coffee.” “Think of Horace,” he continued; “has he not said, ‘Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit’——Coffee with something else? And do you not act in the same way, when you put sugar and milk in your cup?” And then I am forced to be silent; not because he is right, but because I and the firm Last and Co., have to take care that old Mr. Stern does not fall into the hands of Busselinck and Waterman, who would serve him very badly, because they are bunglers.
With your permission, reader! I give vent to my feelings, and in order that you, after reading what Stern has written—[have you really read it?]—should not pour out your wrath on an innocent head,—for what man will employ a broker who scolds him for a man-eater?—I take it for granted that you are convinced of my innocence. I cannot exclude young Stern from a share in my book, now that matters have gone so far. Louise Rosemeyer when she comes out of church—[the boys appear to wait for her]—asks if he will come early in the evening to read a good deal about Max Havelaar and Tine.
But as you bought or borrowed the book trusting in the respectable title, which promises something worth reading, I acknowledge your claims to something that is worth your money, and, therefore, I once more write a couple of chapters. You, reader, do not go to the parties of the Rosemeyers; and therefore you are more fortunate [[158]]than I am, who have to hear all! You are at liberty to pass over the chapters that have a flavour of German excitement, and to read only what has been written by me, who am a respectable man and a coffee-broker.