LETTERS OF A JAVANESE PRINCESS
public. Yes, we thought it to our credit to defy it, and to hold our own ideas high against the world. Not disturbing ourselves one way or another about its approbation, so long as we ourselves were convinced of the holiness of our cause. We still think that is right, but in this instance, we may not live up to our ideal. For now everything depends for us upon the good will of the public. Always we wish to work for the good of our people, and we must not set them against us by crushing with relentless hands the ideas upon which they have thriven and grown old through the centuries.
Patience, the wise have said to us all along. We heard them but did not understand. Now we are beginning to understand. Stella, now we know that the watch-word of all reformers must be Patience. We cannot hasten the course of events, we only retard them when we try to push forward too hastily. If the public should be aroused against us, the whole cause would be held back. People would be unwilling to give their daughters a liberal education, for education would be held responsible for such impossible creatures as we.
Patience! patience, even unto eternity. Stella, I was so miserable when this truth penetrated at last. We must curb ourselves in our enthusiasm, we will not pass our goal without seeing it. Mevrouw Van Kol wrote to us, that before we can realize an ideal, we must first lose many illusions. The first illusion that we have thrown aside is not to give ourselves to the public frankly just as we are. No, that may not be. The public must not know what we are really fighting—the name of the enemy against which we take the field must never, never be cried aloud—It is—polygamy. If that word were heard no man would trust his child to us. I have struggled against this, it is as though we began our work with a lie.
We hoped to make ourselves known just as we were, and that even so,
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