Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/104

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS fragrance and beauty when they are transplanted to distant India! The Echo is now the Nederlandsche Taal.

You can easily imagine that I wrote an enthusiastic letter to its editor and founder (Director of the High School at Probolingo), placing my services at his disposal

And soon a letter came from him with a list of subjects which he would like to have treated by me: the first was "Native Education for Girls"; after that "A Native Institute" and "Javanese Art." Kartini never say I cannot — but I will. I will, Stella, I will. I hope fervently that you have not over-estimated my strength. I shall do my best.

Now I shall tell you something else. We three have begun to study French out of the little books of Servaas de Bruijn. We have wrestled through most of the four volumes and we now want you to recommend to us some simple, easy French books (not School books).

Father has also given us a German grammar. When we get through with our French studies, and have German under our thumbs, we hope to begin English, if we live long enough.

We try now to read French illustrated papers, but reading and understanding are two different things; is it not true?

In the beginning we made the stupidest mistakes, but we have improved slowly and we feel in fine good humour. Roekmini declared once that she had dreamed in French, she was with Chateaubriand and in Louisiana, the beautiful country of which he wrote.

The French language has many resemblances to ours, and the "h" is exactly like ours. Our new friend said to her husband, "They are anxious to learn languages, how glad I should be to teach them myself."

Yesterday I received a letter from her; it was twenty pages long. She wrote so affectionately and said that she felt that she would see us —82—