LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS
was at the time of the coronation of her Majesty. How admirable was the comedy play of the European world behind the scenes!
At that festival, my reverence for Europeans received its death blow. We saw two ladies in earnest speech, intimately holding one another by the arm, their heads confidentially close; we heard affectionate words here and there; good friends, thought we. A gentleman came and broke up the tete-a-tete. As he walked away with one of the ladies, we heard her say: "Such a cat."
While the remaining lady said to another nearby, "That unfortunate creature, she rigs herself up so ridiculously." Just a little while before she had declared that the dear one was charmingly dressed. We received blow after blow that evening, through this, and other heart-rending little scenes. We saw red, fiery men's faces — "gentlemen" who spread the horrible breath of alcohol around them, when they spoke. And, oh, the noise and racket everywhere! We grew cold to our very hearts, and longed eagerly to get away from these "civilized" surroundings. If we had been base, and had told what these friends had said of one another, a formal civil war would have broken out!
Soon after that a girl wrote us of a visit which she had paid to an alleged friend. She had been so charmingly, so cordially received. A little after, we met this "friend" and thanked her for her kind reception of our little friend. She said, "I think her a sullen girl; she always looks so sour and waspish."
Innumerable times we have witnessed fantastic kisses between persons whom we knew hated one another. And it was not the despised "nonas"[1] who did this, but white people of unmixed blood; educated, and brought up with every advantage. We saw too how harmless, sim-
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- ↑ A half-breed woman, child of a native mother and European father.
