Note 46 — PREFACE.
Reading edition
This has been a great talk. What payment are you going to give me? Give me that bottle of rum. I am so thirsty with talking. Don't shake your head; I must have it. Oh, how sweet rum is! There is nothing in the whole world so good. I know a pakeha, who says, if I will get him a big pot, and some old gun-barrels, he will show me how to make rum out of corn. Don't take that bottle away. Come, give it me. You are a chief. Give me the bottle. You are not afraid of the law. I am a great chief; I am not afraid of the law. I will make plenty of rum, and sell it to the pakeha, and get all their money, and I will have a house, and tables, and chairs, and all those sort of things for people to look at; and when the Governor comes to see me, I will scatter money all about the floor, so that when the Governor sees how much more money I have than he has, he will be quite ashamed, and think himself not near so great a chief as I am. I will have fifty pakeha servants, and they shall all work for me one day, and I will make them drunk the next for payment, and the next day they shall work, and the next get drunk, and there shall not be a watch-house in the whole land.[46]