Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/298

 LXIII

August 1st, 1903.

WANT to make myself worthy of the highest title, and that is a Child of God, Have I not told you often that we were done with all personal happiness?

Now life comes to demand that promise of me. I have said that nothing could be too bitter or too hard for us, if it would but enable us to add one little grain of sand to the building of that great structure, the happiness of a people.

Now I have been tested—What am I worth?

Yesterday was again an exciting day for us. We received a communication from the Department of Education, telling us if we did not wish to make use of the opportunity granted us to be educated as teachers, to send a statement accordingly in writing to the Governor General. How must the statement which has been asked for, be worded? Briefly and to the point, that I no longer wish to make use of the offered opportunity because I am engaged to be married; or because now a still better opportunity has presented itself to me of working for our people at the side of a noble man, whom I respect, who loves the people with me, and who will ably support me in my work. I shall be of much greater service with him, than we two, as women standing alone, could ever be.

And Roekmini does not wish to take advantage of the opportunity, —276—