Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/87

 whole soul, and although she lived constantly with her parents she could never lay her inmost thoughts before them. Coldly the strong Javanese etiquette stood between them.

Ni avoided, as much as she could, those people who with their cynicism had withered her; and while the manners and customs of her country did not allow her stricken little soul to seek refuge in her parents' arms and on her parents' hearts, she found comfort in those quiet, silent friends "books."

She had always been fond of reading, but now her love for reading became a passion; as soon as she had time, when all her little duties were done, she would seize a book or a paper. She read everything that came into her hands; she greedily devoured both the green and the ripe. Once she threw a book away which was full of horrors. She did not have to look into books when she wished to know of loathsome, nauseating things; real life was full of them; it was to escape from them that she buried her soul in realms which the genius of man has fashioned out of the spirit of fantasy.

There were so many beautiful books which gave her unspeakable pleasure, and which she will never be able to forget; stories of strong characters nobly laying hold on life, of great souls and spirits, which would make her heart glow with enthusiasm and delight. She lived in everything that she read, while she was reading there was nothing more for which she wished, she was lost! Her Father took great pleasure in her love of reading and showered her with presents of books. She did not understand everything that she read, but she did not allow her- self to be discouraged by that. What she could not understand in the first reading became in the second less obscure, and at the third or fourth, it would be quite clear. Every unknown word that she found —65—