Leslie Stephen - "Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.)"

Leon de Tinseau - "Ma Cousine Pot Au Feu"

D. H. Lawrence - "Fantasia of the Unconscious"

Grace Christie - "Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Old Man Savarin and Other Stories

E >> Edward William Thomson >> Old Man Savarin and Other Stories




"'I will nefer pay one copper till I feel able,' says my grandfather;
'but I'll keep my Hielan' promise to my dying day, as I always done,'
says he.

"And with that the old judge laughed, and said he would have to give
judgment. And so he did; and after that Tougal Stewart got out an
execution. But not the worth of a handful of oatmeal could the bailiff
lay hands on, because my grandfather had chust exactly taken the
precaution to give a bill of sale on his gear to his neighbor,
Alexander Frazer, that could be trusted to do what was right after the
law play was over.

"The whole settlement had great contempt for Tougal Stewart's conduct;
but he was a headstrong body, and once he begun to do wrong against
my grandfather, he held on, for all that his trade fell away; and
finally he had my grandfather arrested for debt, though you'll
understand, sir, that he was owing Stewart nothing that he ought to
pay when he didn't feel able.

"In those times prisoners for debt was taken to jail in Cornwall, and
if they had friends to give bail that they would not go beyond the
posts that was around the sixteen acres nearest the jail walls, the
prisoners could go where they liked on that ground. This was called
'the privilege of the limits.' The limits, you'll understand, wass
marked by cedar posts painted white about the size of hitching-posts.

"The whole settlement was ready to go bail for my grandfather if he
wanted it, and for the health of him he needed to be in the open air,
and so he gave Tuncan-Macdonnell of the Greenfields, and AEneas
Macdonald of the Sandfields, for his bail, and he promised, on his
Hielan' word of honor, not to go beyond the posts. With that he went
where he pleased, only taking care that he never put even the toe of
his foot beyond a post, for all that some prisoners of the limits
would chump ofer them and back again, or maybe swing round them,
holding by their hands.

"Efery day the neighbors would go into Cornwall to give my grandfather
the good word, and they would offer to pay Tougal Stewart for the
other half of the plough, only that vexed my grandfather, for he was
too proud to borrow, and, of course, every day he felt less and less
able to pay on account of him having to hire a man to be doing the
spring ploughing and seeding and making the kale-yard.

"All this time, you'll mind, Tougal Stewart had to pay five shillings
a week for my grandfather's keep, the law being so that if the debtor
swore he had not five pound's worth of property to his name, then the
creditor had to pay the five shillings, and, of course, my grandfather
had nothing to his name after he gave the bill of sale to Alexander
Frazer. A great diversion it was to my grandfather to be reckoning up
that if he lived as long as his father, that was hale and strong at
ninety-six, Tougal would need to pay five or six hundred pounds for
him, and there was only two pound five shillings to be paid on the
plough.

"So it was like that all summer, my grandfather keeping heartsome,
with the neighbors coming in so steady to bring him the news of the
settlement. There he would sit, just inside one of the posts, for to
pass his jokes, and tell what he wished the family to be doing next.
This way it might have kept going on for forty years, only it came
about that my grandfather's youngest child--him that was my
father--fell sick, and seemed like to die.

"Well, when my grandfather heard that bad news, he wass in a terrible
way, to be sure, for he would be longing to hold the child in his
arms, so that his heart was sore and like to break. Eat he could not,
sleep he could not: all night he would be groaning, and all day he
would be walking around by the posts, wishing that he had not passed
his Hielan' word of honor not to go beyond a post; for he thought how
he could have broken out like a chentleman, and gone to see his sick
child, if he had stayed inside the jail wall. So it went on three days
and three nights pefore the wise thought came into my grandfather's
head to show him how he need not go beyond the posts to see his little
sick poy. With that he went straight to one of the white cedar posts,
and pulled it up out of the hole, and started for home, taking great
care to carry it in his hands pefore him, so he would not be beyond it
one bit.

"My grandfather wass not half a mile out of Cornwall, which was only a
little place in those days, when two of the turnkeys came after him.

"'Stop, Mr. McTavish,' says the turnkeys.

"'What for would I stop?' says my grandfather.

"'You have broke your bail,' says they.

"'It's a lie for you,' says my grandfather, for his temper flared up
for anybody to say he would broke his bail. 'Am I beyond the post?'
says my grandfather.

"With that they run in on him, only that he knocked the two of them
over with the post, and went on rejoicing, like an honest man should,
at keeping his word and overcoming them that would slander his good
name. The only thing pesides thoughts of the child that troubled him
was questioning whether he had been strictly right in turning round
for to use the post to defend himself in such a way that it was nearer
the jail than what he wass. But when he remembered how the jailer
never complained of prisoners of the limits chumping ofer the posts,
if so they chumped back again in a moment, the trouble went out of his
mind.

"Pretty soon after that he met Tuncan Macdonnell of Greenfields,
coming into Cornwall with the wagon.

"'And how is this, Glengatchie?' says Tuncan. 'For you were never the
man to broke your bail.'

"Glengatchie, you'll understand, sir, is the name of my grandfather's
farm.

"'Never fear, Greenfields,' says my grandfather, 'for I'm not beyond
the post.'

"So Greenfields looked at the post, and he looked at my grandfather,
and he scratched his head a wee, and he seen it was so; and then he
fell into a great admiration entirely.

"'Get in with me, Glengatchie--it's proud I'll be to carry you home;'
and he turned his team around. My grandfather did so, taking great
care to keep the post in front of him all the time; and that way he
reached home. Out comes my grandmother running to embrace him; but she
had to throw her arms around the post and my grandfather's neck at the
same time, he was that strict to be within his promise. Pefore going
ben the house, he went to the back end of the kale-yard which was
farthest from the jail, and there he stuck the post; and then he went
back to see his sick child, while all the neighbors that came round
was glad to see what a wise thought the saints had put into his mind
to save his bail and his promise.

"So there he stayed a week till my father got well. Of course the
constables came after my grandfather, but the settlement would not let
the creatures come within a mile of Glengatchie. You might think, sir,
that my grandfather would have stayed with his wife and weans, seeing
the post was all the time in the kale-yard, and him careful not to go
beyond it; but he was putting the settlement to a great deal of
trouble day and night to keep the constables off, and he was fearful
that they might take the post away, if ever they got to Glengatchie,
and give him the name of false, that no McTavish ever had. So Tuncan
Greenfields and AEneas Sandfield drove my grandfather back to the jail,
him with the post behind him in the wagon, so as he would be between
it and the jail. Of course Tougal Stewart tried his best to have the
bail declared forfeited; but old Judge Jones only laughed, and said
my grandfather was a Hielan' gentleman, with a very nice sense of
honor, and that was chust exactly the truth.

"How did my grandfather get free in the end? Oh, then, that was
because of Tougal Stewart being careless--him that thought he knew so
much of the law. The law was, you will mind, that Tougal had to pay
five shillings a week for keeping my grandfather in the limits. The
money wass to be paid efery Monday, and it was to be paid in lawful
money of Canada, too. Well, would you belief that Tougal paid in four
shillings in silver one Monday, and one shilling in coppers, for he
took up the collection in church the day pefore, and it wass not till
Tougal had gone away that the jailer saw that one of the coppers was a
Brock copper,--a medal, you will understand, made at General Brock's
death, and not lawful money of Canada at all. With that the jailer
came out to my grandfather.

"'Mr. McTavish,' says he, taking off his hat, 'you are a free man, and
I'm glad of it.' Then he told him what Tougal had done.

"'I hope you will not have any hard feelings toward me, Mr. McTavish,'
said the jailer; and a decent man he wass, for all that there wass not
a drop of Hielan' blood in him. 'I hope you will not think hard of me
for not being hospitable to you, sir,' says he; 'but it's against the
rules and regulations for the jailer to be offering the best he can
command to the prisoners. Now that you are free, Mr. McTavish,' says
the jailer, 'I would be a proud man if Mr. McTavish of Glengatchie
would do me the honor of taking supper with me this night. I will be
asking your leave to invite some of the gentlemen of the place, if you
will say the word, Mr. McTavish,' says he.

"Well, my grandfather could never bear malice, the kind man he was,
and he seen how bad the jailer felt, so he consented, and a great
company came in, to be sure, to celebrate the occasion.

"Did my grandfather pay the balance on the plough? What for should you
suspicion, sir, that my grandfather would refuse his honest debt? Of
course he paid for the plough, for the crop was good that fall.

"'I would be paying you the other half of the plough now, Mr.
Stewart,' says my grandfather, coming in when the store was full.

"'Hoich, but YOU are the honest McTavish!' says Tougal, sneering.

"But my grandfather made no answer to the creature, for he thought it
would be unkind to mention how Tougal had paid out six pounds four
shillings and eleven pence to keep him in on account of a debt of two
pound five that never was due till it was paid."




McGRATH'S BAD NIGHT.


"Come then, childer," said Mrs. McGrath, and took the big iron pot
off. They crowded around her, nine of them, the eldest not more than
thirteen, the youngest just big enough to hold out his yellow crockery
bowl.

"The youngest first," remarked Mrs. McGrath, and ladled out a portion
of the boiled corn-meal to each of the deplorable boys and girls.
Before they reached the stools from which they had sprung up, or
squatted again on the rough floor, they all burned their mouths in
tasting the mush too eagerly. Then there they sat, blowing into their
bowls, glaring into them, lifting their loaded iron spoons
occasionally to taste cautiously, till the mush had somewhat cooled.

Then, _gobble-de-gobble-de-gobble_, it was all gone! Though they had
neither sugar, nor milk, nor butter to it, they found it a remarkably
excellent sample of mush, and wished only that, in quantity, it had
been something more.

Peter McGrath sat close beside the cooking-stove, holding Number Ten,
a girl-baby, who was asleep, and rocking Number Eleven, who was trying
to wake up, in the low, unpainted cradle. He never took his eyes off
Number Eleven; he could not bear to look around and see the nine
devouring the corn-meal so hungrily. Perhaps McGrath could not, and
certainly he would not,--he was so obstinate,--have told why he felt
so reproached by the scene. He had felt very guilty for many weeks.

Twenty, yes, a hundred times a day he looked in a dazed way at his big
hands, and they reproached him, too, that they had no work.

"Where is our smooth, broad-axe handle?" asked the fingers, "and why
do not the wide chips fly?"

He was ashamed, too, every time he rose up, so tall and strong, with
nothing to do, and eleven children and his wife next door to
starvation; but if he had been asked to describe his feelings, he
would merely have growled out angrily something against old John
Pontiac.

"You'll take your sup now, Peter?" asked Mrs. McGrath, offering him
the biggest of the yellow bowls. He looked up then, first at her
forlorn face, then at the pot. Number Nine was diligently scraping off
some streaks of mush that had run down the outside; Numbers Eight,
Seven, Six, and Five were looking respectfully into the pot; Numbers
Four, Three, Two, and One were watching the pot, the steaming bowl,
and their father at the same time. Peter McGrath was very hungry.

"Yourself had better eat, Mary Ann," he said. "I'll be having mine
after it's cooler."

Mrs. McGrath dipped more than a third of the bowlful back into the
pot, and ate the rest with much satisfaction. The numerals watched her
anxiously but resignedly.

"Sure it'll be cold entirely, Peter dear," she said, "and the warmth
is so comforting. Give me little Norah now, the darlint! and be after
eating your supper."

She had ladled out the last spoonful of mush, and the pot was being
scraped inside earnestly by Nine, Eight, Seven, and Six. Peter took
the bowl, and looked at his children.

The earlier numbers were observing him with peculiar sympathy, putting
themselves in his place, as it were, possessing the bowl in
imagination; the others now moved their spoons absent-mindedly around
in the pot, brought them empty to their mouths, mechanically, now and
again, sucked them more or less, and still stared steadily at their
father.

His inner walls felt glued together, yet indescribably hollow; the
smell of the mush went up into his nostrils, and pungently provoked
his palate and throat. He was famishing.

"Troth, then, Mary Ann," he said, "there's no hunger in me to-night.
Sure, I wish the childer wouldn't leave me the trouble of eating it.
Come, then, all of ye!"

The nine came promptly to his call. There were just twenty-two large
spoonfuls in the bowl; each child received two; the remaining four
went to the four youngest. Then the bowl was skilfully scraped by
Number Nine, after which Number Seven took it, whirled a cup of water
artfully round its interior, and with this put a fine finish on his
meal.

Peter McGrath then searched thoughtfully in his trousers pockets,
turning their corners up, getting pinches of tobacco dust out of their
remotest recesses; he put his blouse pocket through a similar process.
He found no pockets in his well-patched overcoat when he took it down,
but he pursued the dust into its lining, and separated it carefully
from little dabs of wool. Then he put the collection into an extremely
old black clay pipe, lifted a coal in with his fingers, and took his
supper.

It would be absurd to assert that, on this continent, a strong man
could be so poor as Peter, unless he had done something very wrong or
very foolish. Peter McGrath was, in truth, out of work because he had
committed an outrage on economics. He had been guilty of the enormous
error of misunderstanding, and trying to set at naught in his own
person, the immutable law of supply and demand.

Fancying that a first-class hewer in a timber shanty had an
inalienable right to receive at least thirty dollars a month, when the
demand was only strong enough to yield him twenty-two dollars a month,
Peter had refused to engage at the beginning of the winter.

"Now, Mr. McGrath, you're making a mistake," said his usual employer,
old John Pontiac. "I'm offering you the best wages going, mind that.
There's mighty little squared timber coming out this winter."

"I'm ready and willing to work, boss, but I'm fit to arn thirty
dollars, surely."

"So you are, so you are, in good times, neighbor, and I'd be glad if
men's wages were forty. That could only be with trade active, and a
fine season for all of us; but I couldn't take out a raft this winter,
and pay what you ask."

"I'd work extra hard. I'm not afeard of work."

"Not you, Peter. There never was a lazy bone in your body. Don't I
know that well? But look, now: if I was to pay you thirty, I should
have to pay all the other hewers thirty; and that's not all. Scorers
and teamsters and road-cutters are used to getting wages in proportion
to hewers. Why, it would cost me a thousand dollars a month to give
you thirty! Go along, now, that's a good fellow, and tell your wife
that you've hired with me."

But Peter did not go back. "I'm bound to have my rights, so I am," he
said sulkily to Mary Ann when he reached the cabin. "The old boss is
getting too hard like, and set on money. Twenty-two dollars! No! I'll
go in to Stambrook and hire."

Mary Ann knew that she might as well try to convince a saw-log that
its proper course was up-stream, as to protest against Peter's
obstinacy. Moreover, she did think the offered wages very low, and had
some hope he might better himself; but when he came back from
Stambrook, she saw trouble ahead. He did not tell her that there,
where his merit's were not known, he had been offered only twenty
dollars, but she surmised his disappointment.

"You'd better be after seeing the boss again, maybe, Peter dear," she
said timidly.

"Not a step," he answered. "The boss'll be after me in a few days,
you'll see." But there he was mistaken, for all the gangs were full.

After that Peter McGrath tramped far and wide, to many a backwoods
hamlet, looking vainly for a job at any wages. The season was the
worst ever known on the river, and before January the shanties were
discharging men, so threatening was the outlook for lumbermen, and so
glutted with timber the markets of the world.

Peter's conscience accused him every hour, but he was too stubborn to
go back to John Pontiac. Indeed, he soon got it into his stupid head
that the old boss was responsible for his misfortunes, and he
consequently came to hate Mr. Pontiac very bitterly.

After supping on his pipeful of tobacco-dust, Peter sat,
straight-backed, leaning elbows on knees and chin on hands, wondering
what on earth was to become of them all next day. For a man out of
work there was not a dollar of credit at the little village store; and
work! why, there was only one kind of work at which money could be
earned in that district in the winter.

When his wife took Number Eleven's cradle into the other room, she
heard him, through the thin partition of upright boards, pasted over
with newspapers, moving round in the dim red flickering fire-light
from the stove-grating.

The children were all asleep, or pretending it; Number Ten in the big
straw bed, where she lay always between her parents; Number Eleven in
her cradle beside; Nine crosswise at the foot; Eight, Seven, Six,
Five, and Four in the other bed; One, Two, and Three curled up,
without taking off their miserable garments, on the "locks" of straw
beside the kitchen stove.

Mary Ann knew very well what Peter was moving round for. She heard him
groan, so low that he did not know he groaned, when he lifted off the
cover of the meal barrel, and could feel nothing whatever therein. She
had actually beaten the meal out of the cracks to make that last pot
of mush. He knew that all the fish he had salted down in the summer
were gone, that the flour was all out, that the last morsel of the pig
had been eaten up long ago; but he went to each of the barrels as
though he could not realize that there was really nothing left. There
were four of those low groans.

"O God, help him! do help him! please do!" she kept saying to
herself. Somehow, all her sufferings and the children's were light to
her, in comparison, as she listened to that big, taciturn man groan,
and him sore with the hunger.

When at last she came out, Peter was not there. He had gone out
silently, so silently that she wondered, and was scared. She opened
the door very softly, and there he was, leaning on the rail fence
between their little rocky plot and the great river. She closed the
door softly, and sat down.

There was a wide steaming space in the river, where the current ran
too swiftly for any ice to form. Peter gazed on it for a long while.
The mist had a friendly look; he was soon reminded of the steam from
an immense bowl of mush! It vexed him. He looked up at the moon. The
moon was certainly mocking him; dashing through light clouds, then
jumping into a wide, clear space, where it soon became motionless, and
mocked him steadily.

He had never known old John Pontiac to jeer any one, but there was his
face in that moon,--Peter made it out quite clearly. He looked up the
road to where he could see, on the hill half a mile distant, the
shimmer of John Pontiac's big tin-roofed house. He thought he could
make out the outlines of all the buildings,--he knew them so
well,--the big barn, the stable, the smoke-house, the store-house for
shanty supplies.

Pork barrels, flour barrels, herring kegs, syrup kegs, sides of frozen
beef, hams and flitches of bacon in the smoke-house, bags of beans,
chests of tea,--he had a vision of them all! Teamsters going off to
the woods daily with provisions, the supply apparently inexhaustible.

And John Pontiac had refused to pay him fair wages!

Peter in exasperation shook his big fist at the moon; it mocked him
worse than ever. Then out went his gaze to the space of mist; it was
still more painfully like mush steam. His pigsty was empty, except of
snow; it made him think again of the empty barrels in the cabin.

The children empty too, or would be to-morrow,--as empty as he felt
that minute. How dumbly the elder ones would reproach him! and what
would comfort the younger ones crying with hunger?

Peter looked again up the hill, through the walls of the store-house.
He was dreadfully hungry.

* * * * *

"John! John!" Mrs. Pontiac jogged her husband. "John, wake up! there's
somebody trying to get into the smoke-house."

"Eh--ugh--ah! I'm 'sleep--ugh." He relapsed again.

"John! John! wake up! There _is_ somebody!"

"What--ugh--eh--what you say?"

"There's somebody getting into the smoke-house."

"Well, there's not much there."

"There's ever so much bacon and ham. Then there's the store-house
open."

"Oh, I guess there's nobody."

"But there is, I'm sure. You must get up!"

They both got up and looked out of the window. The snow-drifts, the
paths through them, the store-house, the smoke-house, and the other
white-washed out-buildings could be seen as clearly as in broad day.
The smoke-house door was open!

Old John Pontiac was one of the kindest souls that ever inhabited a
body, but this was a little too much. Still he was sorry for the man,
no matter who, in that smoke-house,--some Indian probably. He must be
caught and dealt with firmly; but he did not want the man to be too
much hurt.

He put on his clothes and sallied forth. He reached the smoke-house;
there was no one in it; there was a gap, though, where two long
flitches of bacon _had_ been!

John Pontiac's wife saw him go over to the store-house, the door of
which was open too. He looked in, then stopped, and started back as if
in horror. Two flitches tied together with a rope were on the floor,
and inside was a man filling a bag with flour from a barrel.

"Well, well! this is a terrible thing," said old John Pontiac to
himself, shrinking around a corner. "Peter McGrath! Oh, my! oh, my!"

He became hot all over, as if he had done something disgraceful
himself. There was nobody that he respected more than that pigheaded
Peter. What to do? He must punish him of course; but how? Jail--for
him with eleven children! "Oh, my! oh, my!" Old John wished he had not
been awakened to see this terrible downfall.

"It will never do to let him go off with it," he said to himself after
a little reflection. "I'll put him so that he'll know better another
time."

Peter McGrath, as he entered the store-house had felt that bacon
heavier than the heaviest end of the biggest stick of timber he had
ever helped to cant. He felt guilty, sneaking, disgraced; he felt that
the literal Devil had first tempted him near the house, then all
suddenly--with his own hunger pangs and thoughts of his starving
family--swept him into the smoke-house to steal. But he had consented
to do it; he had said he would take flour too,--and he would, he was
so obstinate! And withal, he hated old John Pontiac worse than ever;
for now he accused him of being the cause of his coming to this.

Then all of a sudden he met the face of Pontiac looking in at the
door.

Peter sprang back; he saw Stambrook jail--he saw his eleven children
and his wife--he felt himself a detected felon, and that was worst of
all.

"Well, Peter, you'd ought to have come right in," were the words that
came to his ears, in John Pontiac's heartiest voice. "The missis
would have been glad to see you. We did go to bed a bit early, but
there wouldn't have been any harm in an old neighbor like you waking
us up. Not a word of that--hold on! listen to me. It would be a pity
if old friends like you and me, Peter, couldn't help one another to a
trifling loan of provisions without making a fuss over it." And old
John, taking up the scoop, went on filling the bag as if that were a
matter of course.

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