Note 2 — Chapter I

All lies! And yet in this manner education goes on:—“The new little sister came from the vegetable-woman in a big cabbage.” “All Dutchmen are brave and generous.” “The Romans were glad that the Batavians allowed them to live.” “The Bey of Tunis got a colic when he heard the Dutch colours flapping.” “The Duke of Alva was a monster.”2 “The ebb-tide (in 1672, I believe) lasted a little longer than usual, only to protect the Netherlands.” Nonsense! Holland has remained Holland because our forefathers knew how to manage their affairs, and because they had the true religion—that is the reason. And then came other lies. “A girl is an angel.” Whoever first discovered that never had any sisters. Love is a bliss; you fly with some dear object or other to the end of the earth. The earth has no end, and such love is all nonsense. Nobody can say that I do not live on good terms with my wife,—she is a daughter of Last and Co., coffee-brokers,—nobody can find fault with our marriage. I am a member of the fashionable “Artis” club,3 and she has an Indian shawl which cost £7, 13s. 4d., but yet we never indulged in such a foolish love as would have urged us to fly to the extremities of the earth. When we married, we made an excursion to the Hague. She there bought some flannel, of which I still wear shirts; and further our love has never driven us. So, I say, it is all nonsense and lies! And should my marriage now be less happy than that of those persons who out of pure love become consumptive, or tear the hair out of their heads? Or do you think that my household is less orderly than it would be, if seventeen years ago I had promised my bride in verse that I should marry her? Stuff and nonsense! yet I could have done such a thing as well as any one else; for the making of verses is a profession certainly less difficult than ivory-turning, otherwise how could bon-bons with mottoes be so cheap? Only compare their price with that of two billiard-balls. I have no objection to verses. If you like to put the words into a line, very well; but do not say anything beyond the truth; thus,—