All that is the simple truth, reader.  Do you know that the young German who always stood at the Exchange, near the seventeenth pillar, has eloped with the daughter of Busselinck and Waterman?  Our Mary, like her, will be thirteen years old in September.

“That I had the honour to hear from Mr. Saffeler”—­(Saffeler travels for Stern)—­“that the honoured head of the firm, Ludwig Stern, had a son, Mr. Ernest Stern, who wished for employment for some time in a Dutch house.

“That I, mindful of this”—­(here I referred again to the immorality of employes, and also the history of that daughter of Busselinck and Waterman; it won’t do any harm to tell it)—­“that I, mindful of this, wished, with all my heart, to offer Mr. Ernest Stern the German correspondence of our firm.”

From delicacy I avoided all allusion to honorarium or salary; yet I said:—­

“That if Mr. Ernest Stern would like to stay with us, at 37 Laurier Canal, my wife would care for him as a mother, and have his linen mended in the house”—­(that is the very truth, for Mary sews and knits very well),—­and in conclusion I said, “that we were a religious family.”

The last sentence may do good, for the Sterns are Lutherans.  I posted that letter.  You understand that old Mr. Stern could not very well give his custom to Busselinck and Waterman, if his son were in our office.

When Max Havelaar gets to Java the narrative is less satisfactory, so tangential does it become, but there are enough passages in the manner of that which I have quoted to keep one happy, and to show how entertaining a satirist of his own countrymen at home “Multatuli” (whose real name was Edward Douwes Dekker) might have been had he been possessed by no grievance.

The book, which is very well worth reading, belongs to the literature of humanity and protest.  Its author had to suffer much acrimonious attack, and was probably called a Little Hollander, but the fragment from an unpublished play which he placed as a motto to his book shows him to have lacked no satirical power to meet the enemy:—­

Officer.—­My Lord, this is the man who murdered Betsy.

Judge.—­He must hang for it.  How did he do it?

Officer.—­He cut up her body in little pieces, and salted them.

Judge.—­He is a great criminal.  He must hang for it.

Lothario.—­My Lord, I did not murder Betsy:  I fed and clothed and cherished her.  I can call witnesses who will prove me to be a good man, and no murderer.

Judge.—­You must hang.  You blacken your crime by your self-sufficiency.  It ill becomes one who ... is accused of anything to set up for a good man.

Lothario,—­But, my Lord, ... there are witnesses to prove it; and as I am now accused of murder....

Judge.—­You must hang for it.  You cut up Betsy—­you salted the pieces—­and you are satisfied with your conduct—­three capital counts—­who are you, my good woman?