Page:Letters of a Javanese princess, by Raden Adjeng Kartini, 1921.djvu/97

LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS be out of doors in the morning. If you could only wander around with us; or do you not care for flowers and plants? Mother has her vegetable garden, and we our flower and rose garden; this last is next to our room, and when there is a full moon it is so idylic out there. The sisters bring their guitars and sit under the flowering shrubs and make music. After the concert, we sit idly, sometimes chattering and laughing.

Your indignation over the treatment which my two educated and enlightened fellow countrymen had to endure, did me good. But believe me, they are not all stupid men who conduct themselves so scornfully toward the Javanese. I have met persons who are far from stupid, who even belong to the aristocracy of the mind, but are so haughty and over-bearing that they do not like to be in the same house with me.

Too often we are made to feel that we Javanese are not really human beings at all. How do the Netherlanders expect to be loved by us when they treat us so? Love begets love, but scorn never yet aroused affection. We have many friends among the Hollanders whom we love dearly, even more than we do friends of our own race. They have taken the trouble to try and understand us, and they have won our love. We shall never forget that we have to thank the Hollanders for the awakening of our minds, for our civilization. They may wrong us, but we will like them because we owe them so much.

People may say of the Javanese what they will, but they can never say with truth that they have not hearts. They have them manifestly and they know how to be grateful for benefits, whether they are of a material or of an intellectual kind, although their unmovable —75—