Edmond About - "The Man With The Broken Ear"

Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson - "The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays"

Alexandre Dumas - "Les Quarante Cinq"

Charlotte Mary Yonge - "The Two Guardians"

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.

Cambridge Sketches

F >> Frank Preston Stearns >> Cambridge Sketches




When Benjamin Moran related this incident to the Philadelphia Hock Club
after his return, he added: "We owe it to our Irish-American citizens as
much as to the monitors that we did not suffer from English
interference."

Seward, and also Chase, wished to issue letters of reprisal to privateers
to go in search of the _Alabama_, but Sumner opposed this in an able
speech on the importance of maintaining a high standard of procedure for
the good reputation of the country; and he carried his point.

Sumner's greatest parliamentary feat was occasioned by Trumbull's
introduction of a bill for the reconstruction of Louisiana in the winter
of 1864. There were only ten thousand loyal white voters in the State;
and nothing could be more imprudent or prejudicial than such a hasty
attempt at reorganization of the rebellious South, before the war was
fairly ended. It was like a man building an annex to one side of his
house while the other side was on fire; yet it was known to be supported
by Seward, and, as was alleged, also by Lincoln. It was thrust upon
Congress at the last moment, evidently in order to prevent an extended
debate, and Sumner turned this to his own advantage. For two days and
nights his voice resounded through the Senate chamber, until, with the
assistance of his faithful allies, Wade and Wilson, he succeeded in
preventing the bill from being brought to a vote. It was an extreme
instance of human endurance, without parallel before or since, and may
possibly have shortened Sumner's life. Five weeks later President
Lincoln, in his last speech, made the significant proposition of
universal amnesty combined with universal suffrage. Would that he could
have lived to see the completion of his work!

Something may be said here of Sumner's influence with Mrs. Lincoln. If
Don Piatt is to be trusted, Mrs. Lincoln came to Washington with a
strong feeling of antipathy towards Seward and "those eastern
abolitionists." She was born in a slave state and had remained pro-
slavery,--a fact which did not trouble her husband because he did not
allow it to trouble him. Fifteen months in Washington brought a decided
change in her opinions, and Sumner would seem to have been instrumental
in this conversion. It is well known that she preferred his society to
that of others. She had studied French somewhat, and he encouraged her to
talk it with him,--which was looked upon, of course, as an affectation on
both sides.

At the time of General McClellan's removal, October, 1862, Mrs. Lincoln
was at the Parker House in Boston. Sumner called on her in the forenoon,
and she said at once: "I suppose you have heard the news, and that you
are glad of it. So am I. Mr. Lincoln told me he expected to remove him
before I left Washington."

Sumner resembled Charles XII. of Sweden in this: there is no evidence
that he ever was in love. His devotion to the law in early life,
surrounded as he was by interesting friends, may have been antagonistic
to matrimony. The woman he ought to have married was the noble daughter
of his old friend, Cornelius Felton, whom he often met, but whose worth
he never recognized. The marriage which he contracted late in life was
not based on enduring principles, and soon came to a grievous end. It was
more like the marriages that princes make than a true republican
courtship. Sumner apparently wanted a handsome wife to preside at his
dinner parties in Washington, but he chose her from among his opponents
instead of from among his friends.

Since there has been much foolish talk upon this subject, it may be well
to state here that the true difficulty between Mr. and Mrs. Sumner was
owing to the company which he invited to his house. She only wished to
entertain fashionable people, but a large proportion of Sumner's friends
could not be included within these narrow limits. As Senator from
Massachusetts that would not do for him at all. This is the explanation
that was given by Mrs. Sumner's brother, and it is without doubt the
correct one; but women in such cases are apt to allege something
different from the true reason.

Sumner's most signal triumph happened on the occasion of President
Johnson's first Message to Congress in January, 1865. He rose from his
seat and characterized it as a "whitewashing document." That day he stood
alone, yet within six weeks every Republican Senator was at his side.

Sumner knew how to be silent as well as to talk. On one occasion he was
making a speech in the Senate when he suddenly heard Schuyler Colfax
behind him saying, "This is all very good, Sumner, but here I have the
Appropriation bills from the House, and the Democrats know nothing about
them." Sumner instantly resumed his seat, and the bills were acted on
without serious opposition. He would sometimes sit through a dinner at
the Bird Club without saying very much, but if he once started on a
subject that interested him there was no limit to it.

Sumner's speech on the "Alabama claims" was considered a failure because
the administration did not afterwards support him; and it is true that no
government would submit to a demand for adventitious damages so long as
it could prevent this; but it was a far-reaching exposure of an
unprincipled foreign policy, and this speech formed the groundwork for
the Treaty of Washington and the Geneva arbitration. It was a more
important case than the settlement of the Northeastern boundary.

Sumner died the death of a hero. The administration of General Grant
might well be called the recoil of the cannon: it was the reactionary
effect of a great military movement on civil affairs. Sumner alone
withstood the shock of it, and he fought against it for four years like a
veteran on his last line of defence, feeling victory was no longer
possible. Many of his friends found the current too strong for them; his
own party deserted him; even the Legislature of his own State turned
against him in a senseless and irrational manner. Still his spirit was
unconquerable, and he continued to face the storm as long as life was in
him. It was a magnificent spectacle.

It was the last battlefield of a veteran warrior, and although Sumner
retired from it with a mortal wound, he had the satisfaction of winning a
glorious victory. No end could have been more appropriate to such a life.
_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori._

Since Richard Coeur de Leon forgave Bertram de Gordon, who caused his
death, there has never been a more magnanimous man than Charles Sumner.
Once when L. Maria Child was anathematizing Preston S. Brooks in his
presence, he said: "You should not blame him. It was slavery and not
Brooks that struck me. If Brooks had been born and brought up in New
England, he would no more have done the thing he did than Caleb Cushing
would have done it,"--Cushing always being his type of a pro-slavery
Yankee.

In 1871 Charles W. Slack, the editor of the Boston _Commonwealth_,
for whom Sumner had obtained a lucrative office, turned against his
benefactor in order to save his position. When I spoke of this to Sumner,
he said: "Well, it is human nature. Slack is growing old, and if he keeps
his office for the next six years, he will have a competency. I have no
doubt he feels grateful to me, and regrets the course he is taking." At
the same time, he spoke sadly.

Sumner resembled Lord Chatham more closely than any statesman of the
nineteenth century. He carried his measures through by pure force of
argument and clearness of foresight. From 1854 to 1874 it was his policy
that prevailed in the councils of the nation. He succeeded where others
failed.

He defeated Franklin Pierce, Seward, Trumbull, Andrew Johnson, Hamilton
Fish, and even Lincoln, on the extradition of Mason and Slidell. He tied
Johnson down, so that he could only move his tongue.

In considering Sumner's oratory, we should bear in mind what Coleridge
said to Allston, the painter,--"never judge a work of art by its
defects." His sentences have not the classic purity of Webster's, and his
delivery lacked the ease and elegance of Phillips and Everett. His style
was often too florid and his Latin quotations, though excellent in
themselves, were not suited to the taste of his audiences. But Sumner was
always strong and effective, and that is, after all, the main point. Like
Webster he possessed a logical mind, and the profound earnestness of his
nature gave an equally profound conviction to his words. Besides this,
Sumner possessed the heroic element, as Patrick Henry and James Otis
possessed it. After Webster's death there was no American speaker who
could hold an audience like him.

Matthew Arnold, in his better days, said that Burke's oratory was too
rich and overloaded. This is true, but it is equally true that Burke is
the only orator of the eighteenth century that still continues to be
read. He had a faulty delivery and an ungainly figure, but if he emptied
the benches in the House of Commons he secured a larger audience in
coming generations. The material of his speeches is of such a vital
quality that it possesses a value wholly apart from the time and occasion
of its delivery.

Much the same is true of Sumner, who would have had decidedly the
advantage of Burke so far as personal impressiveness is concerned. His
Phi Beta Kappa address of 1845 is so rich in material that it is even
more interesting to read now than when it was first delivered, and his
remarks on Allston in that oration might be considered to advantage by
every art critic in the country. It should always be remembered that a
speech, like a play, is written not to be read, but to be acted; and
those discourses which read so finely in the newspapers are not commonly
the ones that sounded the best when they were delivered.

Great men create great antagonisms. The antagonism which Lincoln excited
was concentrated in Booth's pistol shot, and the Montagues and Capulets
became reconciled over his bier; but the antagonism against Sumner still
continues to smoke and smoulder like the embers of a dying conflagration.



CHEVALIER HOWE.

The finest modern statue in Berlin is that of General Ziethen, the great
Hussar commander in the Seven Years' War. [Footnote: Von Schlater's
statue of the Great Elector is of course a more magnificent work of art.]
He stands leaning on his sabre in a dreamy, nonchalant attitude, as if he
were in the centre of indifference and life had little interest for him.
Yet there never was a man more ready for action, or more quick to seize
upon and solve the _nodus_ of any new emergency. The Prussian
anecdote-books are full of his exploits and hairbreadth escapes, a number
of which are represented around the base of the statue. He combined the
intelligence of the skilful general with the physical dexterity of an
acrobat.

Very much such a man was Samuel Gridley Howe, born in Boston November 10,
1801, whom Whittier has taken as the archetype of an American hero in his
tune.

If a transient guest at the Bird Club should have seen Doctor Howe
sitting at the table with his indifferent, nonchalant air, head leaning
slightly forward and his grayish-black hair almost falling into his eyes,
he would never have imagined that he was the man who had fought the Turks
hand-to-hand like Cervantes and Sir John Smith; who had been imprisoned
in a Prussian dungeon; who had risked his life in the July Revolution at
Paris; and who had taken the lead in an equally important philanthropic
revolution in his own country.

Next to Sumner he is the most distinguished member of the club, even more
so than Andrew and Wilson; a man with a most enviable record. He does not
talk much where many are gathered together, but if he hears an imprudent
statement, especially an unjust estimate of character, his eyes flash out
from beneath the bushy brows, and he makes a correction which just hits
the nail on the head. He is fond of his own home and is with difficulty
enticed away from it. Once in awhile he will dash out to Cambridge on
horseback to see Longfellow, but the lion-huntresses of Boston spread
their nets in vain for him. He will not even go to the dinner parties for
which Mrs. Howe is in constant demand, but prefers to spend the evening
with his children, helping them about their school lessons, and listening
to the stories of their everyday experiences.

There never was a more modest, unostentatious hero; and no one has
recorded his hairbreadth escapes and daring adventures, for those who
witnessed them never told the tale, nor would Doctor Howe willingly speak
of them himself. He was of too active a temperament to be much of a
scholar in his youth, although in after life he went through with
whatever he undertook in a thorough and conscientious manner. He went to
Brown University, and appears to have lived much the same kind of life
there which Lowell did at Harvard,--full of good spirits, admired by his
classmates, as well as by the young ladies of Providence, and
exceptionally fond of practical jokes; always getting into small
difficulties and getting out of them again with equal facility. He was so
amiable and warm-hearted that nobody could help loving him; and so it
continued to the end of his life.

He could not himself explain exactly why he joined the Greek Revolution.
He had suffered himself while at school from the tyranny of older boys,
and this strengthened the sense of right and justice that had been
implanted in his nature. He had not the romantic disposition of Byron;
neither could he have gone from a desire to win the laurels of Miltiades,
for he never indicated the least desire for celebrity. It seems more
likely that his adventurous disposition urged him to it, as one man takes
to science and another to art.

It was certainly a daring adventure to enlist as a volunteer against the
Turks. Byron might expect that whatever advantage wealth and reputation
can obtain for an individual he could always count upon; but what chances
would young Howe have in disaster or defeat? I never heard that Byron did
much fighting, though he spent his fortune freely in the cause; and
Doctor Howe, as it happened, was not called upon to fight in line of
battle, though he was engaged in some pretty hot skirmishes and risked
himself freely.

He went to Greece in the summer of 1824 and remained till after the
battle of Navarino in 1827. Greece was saved, but the land was a desert
and its people starving. Doctor Howe returned to America to raise funds
and beg provisions for liberated Hellas, in which he was remarkably
successful; but we find also that he published a history of the Greek
Revolution, the second edition of which is dated 1828. For this he must
have collected the materials before leaving Greece; but as it contains an
account of the sea-fight of Navarino, it must have been finished after
his return to America. The book was hastily written, and hastily
published. To judge from appearances it was hurried through the press
without being revised either by its author or a competent proofreader;
but it is a vigorous, spirited narrative, and the best chronicle of that
period in English. Would there were more such histories, even if the
writing be not always grammatical. Doctor Howe does not sentimentalize
over the ruins of Sparta or Plato's Academy, but he describes Greece as
he found it, and its inhabitants as he knew them. He possesses what so
many historians lack, and that is the graphic faculty. He writes in a
better style than either Motley or Bancroft. His book ought to be revised
and reprinted.

We quote from it this clearsighted description of the preparation for a
Graeco-Turkish sea-fight:

"Soon the proud fleet of the Capitan Pashaw was seen coming down
toward Samos, and the Greek vessels advanced to meet it. And here
one cannot but pause a moment to compare the two parties, and
wonder at the contrast between them. On one side bore down a long line
of lofty ships whose very size and weight seemed to give them
a slow and stately motion; completely furnished at every point for
war; their decks crowded with splendidly armed soldiers, and their
sides chequered with double and triple-rows of huge cannon that it
seemed could belch forth a mass of iron which nothing could resist.
On the other side came flying along the waves a squadron of light
brigs and schooners, beautifully modelled, with sails of snowy white,
and with fancifully painted sides, showing but a single row of
tiny cannon. There seemed no possibility of a contest; one fleet
had only to sail upon the other, and by its very weight, bear the
vessels under water without firing a gun.

"But the feelings which animated them were very different. The Turks
were clumsy sailors; they felt ill at ease and as if in a new
element; but above all, they felt a dread of Greek fire-ships,
which made them imagine every vessel that approached them to be
one. The Greeks were at home on the waves,--active and fearless
mariners, they knew that they could run around a Turkish frigate
and not be injured; they knew the dread their enemies had of
fire-ships, and they had their favorite, the daring Kanaris, with
them."

* * * * *

The heroic deeds of the modern Greeks fully equalled those of the
ancients; and the death of Marco Bozzaris was celebrated in all the
languages of western Europe. William Muller, the German poet, composed a
volume of fine lyrics upon the incidents of the Greek Revolution; so that
after his death the Greek Government sent a shipload of marble to Germany
for the construction of his monument.

One day Doctor Howe, with a small party of followers, was anchored in a
yawl off the Corinthian coast, when a Turk crept down to the shore and
commenced firing at them from behind a large tree. After he had done this
twice, the doctor calculated where he would appear the third time, and
firing at the right moment brought him down with his face to the earth.
Doctor Howe often fired at Turks in action, but this was the only one
that he felt sure of having killed; and he does not appear to have even
communicated the fact to his own family.

After Doctor Howe's triumphant return to Greece with a cargo of
provisions in 1828 he was appointed surgeon-general of the Greek navy,
and finally, as a reward for all his services, he received a present of
Byron's cavalry helmet,--certainly a rare trophy. [Footnote: This helmet
hung for many years on the hat tree at Dr. Howe's house in South Boston.]

Doctor Howe's mysterious imprisonment in Berlin in 1832 is the more
enigmatical since Berlin has generally been the refuge of the oppressed
from other European countries. The Huguenots, expelled by Louis XIV.,
went to Berlin in such numbers that they are supposed by Menzel to have
modified the character of its inhabitants. The Salzburg refugees were
welcomed in Prussia by Frederick William I., who had an official hanged
for embezzling funds that were intended for their benefit. In 1770
Frederick the Great gave asylum to the Jesuits who had been expelled from
every Catholic capital in Europe; and when the brothers Grimm and other
professors were banished from Cassel for their liberalism, they were
received and given positions by Frederick William IV. Why then should the
Prussian government have interfered with Doctor Howe, after he had
completed his philanthropic mission to the Polish refugees? Why was he
not arrested in the Polish camp when he first arrived there?

The futile and tyrannical character of this proceeding points directly to
Metternich, who at that time might fairly be styled the Tiberias of
Germany. The Greek Revolution was hateful to Metternich, and he did what
he could to prevent its success. His intrigues in England certainly
delayed the independence of Greece for two years and more. He foresaw
clearly enough that its independence would be a constant annoyance to the
Austrian government,--and so it has proved down to the present time.
Metternich imagined intrigues and revolution in every direction; and
besides, there can be no doubt of the vindictiveness of his nature. The
cunning of the fox is not often combined with the supposed magnanimity of
the lion.

The account of his arrest, which Doctor Howe gave George L. Stearns,
differs very slightly from that in Sanborn's biography. According to the
former he persuaded the Prussian police, on the ground of decency, to
remain outside his door until he could dress himself. In this way he
gained time to secrete his letters. He tore one up and divided the small
pieces in various places. While he was doing this he noticed a bust of
some king of Prussia on top of the high porcelain stove which forms a
part of the furniture of every large room in Berlin. Concluding it must
be hollow he tipped it on edge and inserted the rest of his letters
within. The police never discovered this stratagem, but they searched his
room in the most painstaking manner, collecting all the pieces of the
letter he had torn up, so that they read every word of it. Whether his
letters were really of a compromising character, or he was only afraid
that they might be considered so, has never been explained.

The day after his arrest he was brought before a tribunal and asked a
multitude of questions, which he appears to have answered willingly
enough; and a week or more later the same examiners made a different set
of inquiries of him, all calculated to throw light upon his former
answers. Doctor Howe admitted afterwards that if he had attempted to
deceive them they would certainly have discovered the fact. He was in
prison five weeks, for which the Prussian government had the impudence to
charge him board; and why President Jackson did not demand an apology and
reparation for this outrage on a United States citizen is not the least
mysterious part of the affair.

A good Samaritan does not always find a good Samaritan. After his return
to Paris Doctor Howe went to England, but was taken so severely ill on
the way that he did not know what might have become of him but for an
English passenger with whom he had become acquainted and who carried him
to his own house and cared for him until he was fully recovered. This
excellent man, name now forgotten, had a charming daughter who materially
assisted in Howe's convalescence, and he said afterwards that if he had
not been strongly opposed to matrimony at that time she would probably
have become his wife. He was not married until ten years later; but he
always remembered this incident as one of the pleasantest in his life.

The true hero never rests on his laurels. Doctor Howe had no sooner
returned from Europe than he set himself to work on a design he had
conceived in Paris for the instruction of the blind. Next to Doctor
Morton's discovery of etherization, there has been no undertaking equal
to this for the amelioration of human misery. He brought the best methods
from Europe, and improved upon them. Beginning at first in a small way,
and with such means as he could obtain from the merchants of Boston, he
went on to great achievements. He had the most difficulty in dealing with
legislative appropriations and enactments, for as he was not acquainted
with the ruling class in Massachusetts, they consequently looked upon him
with suspicion. He not only made the plan, but he carried it out; he
organized the institution at South Boston and set the machinery in
motion.

The story of Laura Bridgman is a tale told in many languages. The deaf
and blind girl whom Doctor Howe taught to read and to _think_ soon
became as celebrated as Franklin or Webster. She was between seven and
eight years old when he first discovered her near Hanover, N. H., and for
five years and a half she had neither seen nor heard. It is possible that
she could remember the external world in a dim kind of way, and she must
have learned to speak a few words before she lost her hearing. Doctor
Howe taught her the names of different objects by pasting them in raised
letters on the objects about her, and he taught her to spell by means of
separate blocks with the letters upon them. She then was taught to read
after the usual method of instructing the blind, and communicated with
her fingers after the manner of deaf mutes. Doctor Howe said in his
report of the case:

"Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the success about as
great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of tricks. The poor child
had sat in mute amazement and patiently imitated everything her teacher
did; but now the truth began to flash upon her; her intellect began to
work; she perceived that here was a way by which she could herself make
up a sign of anything that was in her own mind, and show it to another
mind, and at once her countenance lighted up with a human expression; it
was no longer a dog or parrot,--it was an immortal spirit, eagerly
seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits!"

Finally she was educated in the meaning of the simplest abstract terms
like right and wrong, happy and sad, crooked and straight, and in this
she evinced great intelligence, for she described being alone as _all
one_, and being together _all two_,--the original meaning of
alone and altogether, which few persons think of. In trying to express
herself where she found some difficulty she made use of agglutinative
forms of speech. [Footnote: Like the Aztecs, Kanackers and other
primitive races.]

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.