Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/327

 LXXV

Rembang, August 10, 1904.

OESKA :

I think of you so much! Above all do I think of you now, always with a feeling of tenderness, but at the same time, a deep sadness.

Sadness because you are so far from me, and will be even further removed beyond my reach. Why must it be that just those souls that are most closely akin should be separated so far from one another? I am so unhappy when I let myself long for you. I sit still, looking straight ahead, neither hearing nor seeing what is happening around me. I live in the past, that sweet and that bitter past, when I was so eager for suffering, and where your love is interwoven always like a garland of light. I suffered and I rejoiced. My heart is full of sadness, but also of gratitude, for the happiness which your love has brought me. I never cease to thank God for having brought you to us.

Why is it that the Javanese is so poor, they ask? And at the same time, they are thinking how they will be able to get more money out of him. Who will that money come from? Naturally from the little man for whose woe and weal we express such extreme concern that a whole commission is named to inquire into the cause of his retrogression; “What makes the Javanese so poor?” When grass-cutters who

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