Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/234

 XLIV

August 15th, 1902.

URRAH for our native Art and Industry! They are well started now on the road to a splendid future. I cannot tell you how pleased I am. We like to admire our own people and it is so easy to make us proud of them!

The future of our Javanese artists is assured. Heer Zimmerman was in ecstasies over the work that he saw here by the despised brown race: Wood carving, the art of the gold smith, and textile weaving have reached a high degree of excellence. Our artists here have received a large order from East and West for St. Nicholas. We are delighted. Now the clever artist can bring out new ideas and express his poetic thoughts in graceful undulating lines and in ravishing, glowing, changing colours. Oh, it is splendid above everything else to seek the beautiful—a spark of God is everywhere, even when things outwardly appear most evil.

There was once a child who went to an old woman who asked her what she would like to have, for the little one had neither sweets, nor ornaments, nor clothes; but the child said "Oh Mother, give me a flower that opens in the heart."

How do you like that? You must see it in the original—the answer of the child sounds so sweet. There is a deep meaning in bloementaal. —212—