Various - "Scientific American Supplement No. 275"

Victor Appleton - "Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle"

Elbert Hubbard - "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14"

Mrs. Humphrey Ward - "Amiel's Journal"

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.

The Coast of Chance

E >> Esther Chamberlain >> The Coast of Chance




She saw herself fairly caught. She heard her mental process stated to
perfection.

"But if you hadn't felt all along I was your kind, if you hadn't had an
idea that I was a stray from the original fold, you would never have
wanted to go in for me," he explained it.

Flora had her doubts about the truth of this. For a time she had been
certain of his belonging to the lawless other fold, and at times she
would have gone with him in spite of it, but this last knowledge she
withheld. She withheld it because she could make out now, that, for all
his seeming wildness, he had no lawless instincts in himself.
Generations of great doing and great mixing among men had created him, a
creature perfectly natural and therefore eccentric; but the same
generations had handed down from father to son the law-abiding instinct
of the rulers of the people. He could be careless of the law. He was
strong in it. In his own mind he and the law were one. His perception of
the relations of life was so complete that he had no further use for the
written law; and Farrell Wand's was so limited that he had never found
the use for it. Lawless both; but--the two extremes. They might seem to
meet--but between those two extremes, between a Chatworth and a Farrell
Wand--why, there was all the world's experience between!

She raised her eyes and smiled at him in thinking of it, but the smile
faltered and she drew away. They were about to be disturbed. Beyond the
rose branches far down the drive she saw a figure moving toward them at
a slow, uncertain pace, looking to and fro. "See, there's some one
coming."

"Oh, the gardener!" he said as one would say "Oh, fiddlesticks!"

The gardener had been her first thought. But now she rose uneasily,
since she saw it was not he, asking herself, "Who else, at such an
hour?"

By this time Chatworth, still seated, had caught sight of it. "Hello,"
he said, "what sort of a thing is that?"

It was a short, shabby, nondescript little figure, shuffling rapidly
along the winding walk between the rose bushes. Now they saw the top of
his round black felt hat. Now only a twinkling pair of legs. Now, around
the last clump of bushes he appeared full length, and, suddenly dropping
his businesslike shuffle, approached them at a languid walk.

Flora grasped Chatworth's arm in nervous terror. "Tell him to go," she
whispered; "make him go away."

The blue-eyed Chinaman was planted before them stolidly, with the
curious blind look of his guarded eyes blinking in his withered face. He
wore for the first time the blouse of his people, and his hands were
folded in his sleeves.

"Who's this?" said Chatworth, appealing to Flora.

At this the Chinaman spoke. "Mr. Crew," he croaked.

The Englishman, looking from the Oriental to Flora, still demanded
explanations with expostulating gesture.

"It is the man who sold us the sapphire," she whispered; and "Oh, what
does he want of you?"

"Eh?" said Chatworth, interrogating the goldsmith with his monocle.
"What do you want?"

The little man finished his long, and, what had seemed his blind, stare;
then dived into his sleeve. He drew forth a crumpled thing which seemed
to be a pellet and this he proceeded to unfold. Flora crept cautiously
forward, loath to come near, but curious, and saw him spread out and
hold up a roughly torn triangle of newspaper. She gave a cry at sight
of it. Across the top in thick black type ran the figures $20,000.

Chatworth pointed a stern forefinger. "What is it?" he said, though by
his tone he knew.

The Chinaman also pointed at it, but cautious and apologetic. "Twenty
thousand dollar. You likee twenty thousand dollar?" He waited a moment.
Then, with a glimmer as of returning sight, presented the alternative.
"You likee god?--little joss?--come so?" And with his finger he traced
in the air a curve of such delicate accuracy that the Englishman with an
exclamation made a step toward him. But the Chinaman did not move.
"Twenty thousand dollar," he stated. It sounded an impersonal statement,
but nevertheless it was quite evident this time to whom it applied.

The Englishman measured off his words slowly as if to an incomplete
understanding, which Flora was aware was all too miraculously quick.
"This little god, this ring--do you know where it is? Can you take me to
it?"

The goldsmith nodded emphatically at each word, but when all was said
he only reiterated, "Twenty thousand dollar."

Chatworth gave Flora an almost shamefaced glance, and she saw with a
curious twinge of jealousy that he was intensely excited. "Might as well
have a pot-shot at it," he said; and sitting down on the edge of the
fountain and taking out his check-book, rested it on his knee and wrote.
Then he rose; he held up the filled-in slip before the Chinaman's eyes.

"Here," he said, "twenty thousand dollars." He held the paper well out
of the little man's reach. "Now," he challenged, "tell me where it is?"

Into the goldsmith's eyes came a lightning flash of intelligence, such
as Flora remembered to have seen there when Farrell Wand, leaning on the
dusty counter, had bidden him go and bring something pretty. He seemed
to quiver a moment in indecision. Then he whipped his hand out of his
sleeve and held it forth palm upward. This time it was Chatworth who
cried out. The thing that lay on the goldsmith's palm Flora had never
seen, though once it had been described to her--"a bit of an old gold
heathen god, curled around himself, with his head of two yellow
sapphires and a big blue stone on top."

There it blazed at her, the jewel she had carried in her bosom, that she
had hidden in her pouch of gold, and that had vanished from it at the
touch of a magic hand, now cunningly restored to its right place in the
forehead of the Crew Idol, crowning him with living light.

Speechless they looked together at the magic thing. They had thought it
far at sea; and as if at a wave of a genii's wand it was here before
them flashing in the quiet garden.

With an effort Chatworth seemed to keep himself from seizing on ring and
man together. He looked searchingly at the goldsmith and seemed on the
point of asking a question, but, instead, he slowly held out his hand.
He held it out cup-fashion. It shook so that Flora saw the Chinaman
steady it to drop in the ring. Then, folding his check miraculously
small, enveloping it in the ragged piece of newspaper, the little man
turned and shuffled from them down the gravel walk.

Chatworth stood staring after him with his Idol in his palm. Then,
turning slow eyes to Flora, "How did he come by this?" he asked, as
sternly as if he demanded it of the mystery itself.

"He had it, from the very first." The pieces of the puzzle were flashing
together in Flora's mind. "That first time Harry left the exhibit he
took it there."

"But the blue sapphire?" Chatworth insisted.

"Harry," Flora whispered, "Harry gave it up to him."

"Gave it up to him!" Chatworth echoed in scorn.

But she had had an inspiration of understanding. "He had to--for money
to get off with. He gave Clara all he had so that she would let him get
away. Poor thing!" she added in a lower breath, but Chatworth did not
hear her. He had taken the Idol in his thumb and finger, and, holding it
up in the broadening light, looked fixedly at it with the passionate
incredulity with which one might hold and look at a friend thought dead.
She watched him with her jealous pang increasing to a greater feeling--a
feeling of being separated from him by this jewel which he loved, and
which had grown to seem hateful to her, which had shown itself a breeder
of all the greedy passions. She came softly up to him, and, lifting her
hand, covered the Idol.

He turned toward her in wonder.

"Ah, you love it too much," she whispered.

"That's unworthy of you," he reproached her. "I have loved you more; and
that in spite of what I believed of you, and what this means to me. To
me, this ring is not a pretty thing seen yesterday. It is the symbol of
my family. It is the power and pride of us, which our women have worn on
their hands as they have worn our honor in their hearts. It is part of
the life of my people and now it has made itself part of our life, of
yours and mine. Shall I ever forget how starkly you held it for the sake
of my honor, even against myself? Should I ever have known you without
it?" He put the ring into her hand, and, smiling with his old dare, held
it over the fountain. "Now, if you want to, drop it in." He released her
hand and turned to leave her to her will.

For a moment she stood with power in her hands and her eyes on his
averted head. Then with a little rush she crossed the space between
them. "Here, take it! You love it! I want you to keep it! but I can't
forget the dreadful things it has made people do. It makes me afraid."

In spite of his smiling he seemed to her very grave. "You dear, silly
child! The whole storm and trouble of life comes from things being in
the wrong place. This has been in the wrong place and made mischief."

"Like me," she murmured.

"Like you," he agreed. "Now we shall be as we should be. Give me your
hand."

He drew off all the rings with which she had once tried to dim the
sparkle of the sapphire, and, dropping them into his pocket like so
much dross, slipped on the Idol that covered her third finger in a
splendid bar from knuckle to joint. Holding her by just the tip of that
finger, leaning back a little, he looked into her eyes, and she, looking
back, knew that it wedded them once for all.


THE END




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A Christian Science novel that will bring delight to the heart of every
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It will hold the fiction lover close to every page.


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+THE SECRET ORCHARD. Illustrated by Charles D. Williams.+

The "Secret Orchard" is set in the midst of the ultra modern society.
The scene is in Paris, but most of the characters are English speaking.
The story was dramatized in London, and in it the Kendalls scored a
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"Artfully contrived and full of romantic charm * * * it possesses
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+FLOWER O' THE ORANGE. With frontispiece.+

We have learned to expect from these fertile authors novels graceful in
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love as thrilling and picturesque, yet delicate, as the utmost seeker of
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+MY MERRY ROCKHURST. Illustrated by Arthur E. Becher.+

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GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York

* * * * *

FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS IN POPULAR PRICED EDITIONS

Re-issues of the great literary successes of the time, library size,
printed on excellent paper--most of them finely illustrated. Full and
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+THE CATTLE BARON'S DAUGHTER. A Novel. By Harold Bindloss. With
illustrations by David Ericson.+

A story of the fight for the cattle-ranges of the West. Intense interest
is aroused by its pictures of life in the cattle country at that
critical moment of transition when the great tracts of land used for
grazing were taken up by the incoming homesteaders, with the inevitable
result of fierce contest, of passionate emotion on both sides, and of
final triumph of the inevitable tendency of the times.


+WINSTON OF THE PRAIRIE. With illustrations in color by W. Herbert
Dunton.+

A man of upright character, young and clean, but badly worsted in the
battle of life, consents as a desperate resort to impersonate for a
period a man of his own age--scoundrelly in character but of an
aristocratic and moneyed family. The better man finds himself barred
from resuming his old name. How, coming into the other man's
possessions, he wins the respect of all men, and the love of a
fastidious, delicately nurtured girl, is the thread upon which the story
hangs. It is one of the best novels of the West that has appeared for
years.


+THAT MAINWARING AFFAIR. By A. Maynard Barbour. With illustrations by E.
Plaisted Abbott.+

A novel with a most intricate and carefully unraveled plot. A naturally
probable and excellently developed story and the reader will follow the
fortunes of each character with unabating interest * * * the interest is
keen at the close of the first chapter and increases to the end.


+AT THE TIME APPOINTED. With a frontispiece in colors by J. H. Marchand.+

The fortunes of a young mining engineer who through an accident loses
his memory and identity. In his new character and under his new name,
the hero lives a new life of struggle and adventure. The volume will be
found highly entertaining by those who appreciate a thoroughly good
story.


GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers,----New York

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