Heaven grant that it may not be necessary!...
No, it will not be necessary! For it is to thee I dedicate my book: William the Third, King, Grand Duke, Prince, ... more than Prince, Grand Duke, and King, ... Emperor of the magnificent empire of Insulind, which winds about the equator like a garland of emeralds!...
I ask Thee if it be thine Imperial will that the Havelaars should be bespattered with the mud of Slymerings and Dry-stubbles; and that thy more than thirty millions of Subjects far away should be ill treated and should suffer extortion in Thy name!
IDYLL OF SAÏDJAH AND ADINDA
From 'Max Havelaar'
Saïdjah's father had a buffalo, with which he plowed his field. When this buffalo was taken away from him by the district chief at Parang-Koodjang he was very dejected, and did not speak a word for many a day. For the time for plowing was come, and he had to fear that if the rice field was not worked in time, the opportunity to sow would be lost, and lastly, that there would be no paddy to cut, none to keep in the store-room of the house. He feared that his wife would have no rice, nor Saïdjah himself, who was still a child, nor his little brothers and sisters. And the district chief too would accuse him to the Assistant Resident if he was behindhand in the payment of his land taxes, for this is punished by the law. Saïdjah's father then took a poniard which was an heirloom from his father. The poniard was not very handsome, but there were silver bands round the sheath, and at the end there was a silver plate. He sold this poniard to a Chinaman who dwelt in the capital, and came home with twenty-four guilders, for which money he bought another buffalo.
Saïdjah, who was then about seven years old, soon made friends with the new buffalo. It is not without meaning that I say "made friends," for it is indeed touching to see how the buffalo is attached to the little boy who watches over and feeds him. The large strong animal bends its heavy head to the right, to the left, or downward, just as the pressure of the child's finger, which he knows and understands, directs.
Such a friendship little Saïdjah had soon been able to make with the new-comer. The buffalo turned willingly on reaching the end of the field, and did not lose an inch of ground when plowing backwards the new furrow. Quite near were the rice fields of the father of Adinda (the child that was to marry Saïdjah); and when the little brothers of Adinda came to the limit of their fields just at the same time that the father of Saïdjah was there with his plow, then the children called out merrily to each other, and each praised the strength and the docility of his buffalo. Saïdjah was nine and Adinda six, when this buffalo was taken by the chief of the district of Parang-Koodjang. Saïdjah's father, who was very poor, thereupon sold to a Chinaman two silver curtain-hooks—heirlooms from the parents of his wife—for eighteen guilders, and bought a new buffalo.
When this buffalo had also been taken away and slaughtered—