lish--that they were a nation of
shopkeepers--never seemed to me very shrewd: but in Holland one
realises that if any nation is to be thus signally stigmatised it
is not the English. As a matter of fact we are very indifferent
shopkeepers. We lack several of the needful qualities: we lack
foresight, the sense of order and organised industry, and the strength
of mind to resist the temptations following upon a great coup. A
nation of shopkeepers would not go back on the shop so completely as
we do. No nation that is essentially snobbish can be accurately summed
up as a nation of shopkeepers. The French for all their distracting
gifts of art and mockery are better shopkeepers than we, largely
because they are more sensibly contented. They take short views and
live each day more fully. But the Dutch are better still; the Dutch
are truly a nation of shopkeepers. [4]

If one would see the Amsterdam merchant as the satirist sees him,
the _locus classicus_ is Multatuli's famous novel _Max Havelaar_,
where he stands delightfully nude in the person of Mr. Drystubble,
head of the firm of Last and Co., Coffee-brokers, No. 37 Laurier
Canal. _Max Havelaar_ was published in the early sixties to draw
attention to certain scandals in Dutch colonial administration, and it
has lived on, and will live, by reason of a curious blend of vivacity
and intensity. Here is a little piece of Mr. Drystubble's mind:--

Business is slack on the Coffee Exchange. The Spring Auction will
make it right again. Don't suppose, however, that we have nothing
to do. At Busselinck and Waterman's trade is slacker still. It is
a strange world this: one gets a deal of experience by frequenting
the Exchange for twenty years. Only fancy that they have tried--I
mean Busselinck and Waterman--to do me out of the custom of Ludwig
Stern. As I do not know whether you are familiar with the Exchange,
I will tell you that Stern is an eminent coffee-merchant in Hamburg,
who always employed Last and Co. Quite accidentally I found that
out--I mean that bungling business of Busselinck and Waterman. They
had offered to reduce the brokerage by one-fourth per cent. They
are low fellows--nothing else. And now look what I have done to stop
them. Any one in my place would perhaps have written to Ludwig Stern,
"that we too would diminish the brokerage, and that we hoped for
consideration on account of the long services of Last and Co."

I have calculated that our firm, during the las