Each object that falls out of our hands is picked up with the saying; "Oh, Allah, my child." Do I have to explain the meaning of that to you, what it shows?
Stella, I shall work earnestly at your language, so that some day I may be such a mistress of it that I can make all that is beautiful among our people clear and intelligible to the outside world. I want to study my own language hard as well. I want to teach our people to know that white race as I know it in its finer, nobler aspects. They must learn of your nobleness, of your greatness, so that they will honour and love you. I want to do so much that sometimes I wish that I had a double pair of hands. The will is great, but the strength is little. And I must not injure my health, that would be the most stupid thing that I could do. And yet I am often stupid, sometimes sitting and working till late at night and that is not good for me. I may defeat my own object if in the end it should do me harm and I could not overcome my bodily weakness, so I am doing my best to live soberly and sensibly.
[1] To Mejuffrouw Zeehandelaar.
[2] Mevrouw Nellie Van Kol.
XLIV[1]
August 15th, 1902.
Hurrah for our native Art and Industry! They are well started now on the road to a splendid future. I cannot tell you how pleased I am. We like to admire our own people and it is so easy to make us proud of them!
The future of our Javanese artists is assured.
Heer Zimmerman was in ecstasies over the work that he saw here by the despised brown race: Wood carving, the art of the gold smith, and textile weaving have reached a high degree of excellence. Our artists here have received a large order from East and West for St. Nicholas. We are delighted. Now the clever artist can bring out new ideas and express his poetic thoughts in graceful undulating lines and in ravishing, glowing, changing colours. Oh, it is splendid above everything else to seek the beautiful—a spark of God is everywhere, even when things outwardly appear most evil.