t fifty years,
has gained four hundred thousand guilders by Stern. Our connexion
dates from the beginning of the continental system, when we smuggled
Colonial produce and such like things from Heligoland. No, I won't
reduce the brokerage.

I went to the Polen coffee-house, ordered pen and paper, and wrote:--

"That because of the many honoured commissions received from North
Germany, our business transactions had been extended"--(it is
the simple truth)--"and that this necessitated an augmentation of
our staff"--(it is the truth: no more than yesterday evening our
bookkeeper was in the office after eleven o'clock to look for his
spectacles);--"that, above all things, we were in want of respectable,
educated young men to conduct the German correspondence. That,
certainly, there were many young Germans in Amsterdam, who possessed
the requisite qualifications, but that a respectable firm"--(it is
the very truth),--"seeing the frivolity and immorality of young men,
and the daily increasing number of adventurers, and with an eye to
the necessity of making correctness of conduct go hand in hand with
correctness in the execution of orders"--(it is the truth, I observe,
and nothing but the truth),--"that such a firm--I mean Last and Co.,
coffee-brokers, 37 Laurier Canal--could not be anxious enough in
engaging new hands."

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 re