Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/126

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS I used to sit idly and take pleasure in the thought of how your eyes would shine when you heard the splendid news. And now the whole proposal has evaporated like smoke — has gone to the moon.

I do not know exactly how the matter stands; our friends at Batavia are away on a journey, but it goes very, very badly. Now if the plan for the domestic school for native girls should be in the same case, put down through the unwillingness of the parents themselves, there will be nothing left.

My fingers bum to write about the splendid plans of the Director of Education, and about the proposed education of Regents' daughters to be teachers, but I remain idle. I must not express my opinions on important subjects, least of all through means of the press.

Many persons in our immediate surroundings know nothing of what is brooding and raging within us; they know nothing of our plans. One of our acquaintances who comes to the house often, read in the newspapers about the proposed school for Regents' daughters, and said to my sisters, that would be just the thing for me, and that she and her husband would urge me to think seriously about it! Her husband spoke to me of the same thing, and with a blank face, as though knowing nothing, I let him speak.

Both husband and wife are enthusiastic for the work of emancipating the native woman. He is a government official, and for that reason can do much for our cause. He will soon be promoted, and then they will both be able to do much more for our people.

We have devised a plan for her, and she and her husband have listened to it with interest. When he becomes Assistant Resident, she is to invite the little daughters of the native officials serving under him to come to her house on certain fixed days, and give them instruction in handiwork and cooking; perhaps also in reading and writing. That —104—