Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/90

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS injustice; and Ni thanked God with tears in her eyes that her brother was beginning to be fond of her. She who had been formerly disliked and hated was now first. She was always with him, and he would do more for her than for any one else.

A half year before a younger sister had come to share the imprisonment. Bemi was fortunate, at an age when Ni had already been for a long time safely immured behind high thick walls, she could run freely around, go on little journeys and do many other things that were forbidden to Ni. Bemi was fourteen and a half years of age when she came home to stay.

Ni was now sixteen. The oldest sister married, and with the wedding celebration changes came into her own life. Ni learned to know her sisters, who up to this time had lived near her, but as strangers. There could never have been very much confidence between her older sister and herself; she was only an older sister. And Ni did not wish to be so regarded by the younger ones: she wished to be loved, and not feared. Freedom and equality were what she asked for herself; ought she not to begin by giving them to others? The intercourse between the younger sisters and herself must be free and unrestrained. Away with everything that would hinder it. With Bimi and Wi, a little sister who had meanwhile come to the house, Ni took sister's room. And the three lives that had hitherto been strange to one another met, flowed together and became as one.

August, 1900.

O, the inward pain of caring for nothing. We must have something; work, that will take entire possession of us, and leave no time for torturing thoughts. That is the only thing that can awaken our slumbering souls, and give us back our strength of spirit. Work, that is just it. —68—