Charles Kingsley - "Out of the Deep"

George Herbert Betts - "The Mind and Its Education"

Richard B. Cook - "The Grand Old Man"

Ruth Comfort Mitchell - "Jane Journeys On"

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.

A Jolly Fellowship

F >> Frank R. Stockton >> A Jolly Fellowship




Everything was quiet on the water, and everything, except the engine,
was just as quiet on the tug. Rectus and Corny and Celia were still
asleep, and nobody else seemed stirring, though, of course, some of the
men were at their posts. I don't think the captain wanted to be about
when Corny came out on deck, and found that we had given up the search.
I intended to be with her when she first learned this terrible fact,
which I knew would put an end to all hope in her heart; but I was in no
hurry for her to wake up. I very much hoped she would sleep until we
reached the city, and then we could take her directly to her kind
friends.

And she did sleep until we reached the city. It was about seven o'clock
in the morning, I think, when we began to steam slowly by the wharves
and piers. I now wished the city were twenty miles further on. I knew
that when we stopped I should have to wake up poor Corny.

The city looked doleful. Although it was not very early in the morning,
there were very few people about. Some men could be seen on the decks of
the vessels at the wharves, and a big steamer for one of the northern
ports was getting up steam. I could not help thinking how happy the
people must be who were going away in her. On one of the piers near
where we were going to stop--we were coming in now--were a few darkey
boys, sitting on a wharf-log, and dangling their bare feet over the
water. I wondered how they dared laugh, and be so jolly. In a few
minutes Corny must be wakened. On a post, near these boys, a lounger sat
fishing with a long pole,--actually fishing away as if there were no
sorrows and deaths, or shipwrecked or broken-hearted people in the
world. I was particularly angry at this man--and I was so nervous that
all sorts of things made me angry--because he was old enough to know
better, and because he looked like such a fool. He had on green
trousers, dirty canvas shoes and no stockings, a striped linen coat, and
an old straw hat, which lopped down over his nose. One of the men called
to him to catch the line which he was about to throw on the wharf, but
he paid no attention, and a negro boy came and caught the line. The man
actually had a bite, and couldn't take his eyes from the cork. I wished
the line had hit him and knocked him off the post.

The tide was high, and the tug was not much below the wharf when we
hauled up. Just as we touched the pier, the man, who was a little
astern of us, caught his fish. He jerked it up, and jumped off his post,
and, as he looked up in delight at his little fish, which was swinging
in the air, I saw he was Mr. Chipperton!

I made one dash for Corny's little cubby-hole. I banged at the door. I
shouted:

"Corny! Here's your father!"

She was out in an instant. She had slept in her clothes. She had no
bonnet on. She ran out on deck, and looked about, dazed. The sight of
the wharves and the ships seemed to stun her.

"Where?" she cried.

I took her by the arm and pointed out her father, who still stood
holding the fishing-pole in one hand, while endeavoring to clutch the
swinging fish with the other.

The plank had just been thrown out from the little deck. Corny made one
bound. I think she struck the plank in the middle, like an India-rubber
ball, and then she was on the wharf; and before he could bring his eyes
down to the earth, her arms were around her father's neck, and she was
wildly kissing and hugging him.

Mr. Chipperton was considerably startled, but when he saw who it was who
had him, he threw his arms around Corny, and hugged and kissed her as if
he had gone mad.

Rectus was out by this time, and as he and I stood on the tug, we could
not help laughing, although we were so happy that we could have cried.
There stood that ridiculous figure, Mr. Chipperton, in his short green
trousers and his thin striped coat, with his arms around his daughter,
and the fishing-pole tightly clasped to her back, while the poor little
fish dangled and bobbed at every fresh hug.

Everybody on board was looking at them, and one of the little black
boys, who didn't appear to appreciate sentiment, made a dash for the
fish, unhooked it, and put like a good fellow. This rather broke the
spell that was on us all, and Rectus and I ran on shore.

We did not ask any questions, we were too glad to see him. After he had
put Corny on one side, and had shaken our hands wildly with his left
hand, for his right still held the pole, and had tried to talk and found
he couldn't, we called a carriage that had just come up, and hustled him
and Corny into it. I took the pole from his hand, and asked him where he
would go to. He called out the name of the hotel where we were staying,
and I shut the door, and sent them off. I did not ask a word about
Corny's mother, for I knew Mr. Chipperton would not be sitting on a post
and fishing if his wife was dead.

I threw the pole and line away, and then Rectus and I walked up to the
hotel. We forgot all about Celia, who was left to go home when she
chose.

It was some hours before we saw the Chippertons, and then we were called
into their room, where there was a talking and a telling things, such as
I never heard before.

It was some time before I could get Mr. and Mrs. Chipperton's story
straight, but this was about the amount of it: They were picked up
sooner than we were--just after day-break. When they left the ship, they
rowed as hard as they could, for several hours, and so got a good
distance from us. It was well they met with a vessel as soon as they
did, for all the women who had been on the steamer were in this boat,
and they had a hard time of it. The water dashed over them very often,
and Mr. Chipperton thought that some of them could not have held out
much longer (I wondered what they would have done on our raft).

The vessel that picked them up was a coasting schooner bound to one of
the Florida Keys, and she wouldn't put back with them, for she was under
some sort of a contract, and kept right straight on her way. When they
got down there, they chartered a vessel which brought them up to
Fernandina, where they took the steamer for Savannah. They were on the
very steamer we passed in the inside passage. If we had only known that!

They telegraphed the moment they reached Fernandina, and proposed
stopping at St. Augustine, but it was thought they could make better
time by keeping right on to Fernandina. The telegram reached Savannah
after we had left on the tug.

Mr. Chipperton said he got his fancy clothes on board the schooner. He
bought them of a man--a passenger, I believe--who had an extra suit.

"I think," said Mr. Chipperton, "he was the only man on that mean little
vessel who had two suits of clothes. I don't know whether these were his
weekday or his Sunday clothes. As for my own, they were so wet that I
took them off the moment I got on board the schooner, and I never saw
them again. I don't know what became of them, and, to tell the truth, I
haven't thought of 'em. I was too glad to get started for Savannah,
where I knew we'd meet Corny, if she was alive. You see, I trusted in
you boys."

Just here, Mrs. Chipperton kissed us both again. This made several times
that she had done it. We didn't care so much, as there was no one there
but ourselves and the Chippertons.

"When we got here, and found you had gone to look for us, I wanted to
get another tug and go right after you, but my wife was a good deal
shaken up, and I did not want to leave her; and Parker and Darrell said
they had given positive orders to have you brought back this morning, so
I waited. I was only too glad to know you were all safe. I got up early
in the morning, and went down to watch for you. You must have been
surprised to see me fishing, but I had nothing else to do, and so I
hired a pole and line of a boy. It helped very much to pass the time
away."

"Yes," said Rectus, "you didn't notice us at all, you were so much
interested."

"Well, you see," said Mr. Chipperton, "I had a bite just at that minute;
and, besides, I really did not look for you on such a little boat. I had
an idea you would come on something more respectable than that."

"As if we should ever think of respectability at such a time!" said Mrs.
Chipperton, with tears in her eyes.

"As for you boys," said Mr. Chipperton, getting up and taking us each by
the hand, "I don't know what to say to you."

I thought, for my part, that they had all said enough already. They had
praised and thanked us for things we had never thought of.

"I almost wish you were orphans," he continued, "so that I might adopt
you. But a boy can't have more than one father. However, I tell you! a
boy can have as many uncles as he pleases. I'll be an uncle to each of
you as long as I live. Ever after this call me Uncle Chipperton. Do you
hear that?"

We heard, and said we'd do it.

Soon after this, lots of people came in, and the whole thing was gone
over again and again. I am sorry to say that, at one or two places in
the story, Mrs. Chipperton kissed us both again.

Before we went down to dinner, I asked Uncle Chipperton how his lung had
stood it, through all this exposure.

"Oh, bother the lung!" he said. "I tell you; boys, I've lost faith in
that lung,--at least, in there being anything the matter with it. I
shall travel for it no more."




CHAPTER XXII.

LOOKING AHEAD.


"We have made up our minds," said Uncle Chipperton, that afternoon, "to
go home and settle down, and let Corny go to school. I hate to send her
away from us, but it will be for her good. But that wont be until next
fall. We'll keep her until then. And now, I'll tell you what I think
we'd all better do. It's too soon to go North yet. No one should go from
the soft climate of the semi-tropics to the Northern or Middle States
until mild weather has fairly set in there. And that will not happen for
a month yet.

"Now, this is my plan. Let us all take a leisurely trip homeward by the
way of Mobile, and New Orleans and the Mississippi River. This will be
just the season, and we shall be just the party. What do you say?"

Everybody, but me, said it would be splendid. I had exactly the same
idea about it, but I didn't say so, for there was no use in it. I
couldn't go on a trip like that. I had been counting up my money that
morning, and found I would have to shave pretty closely to get home by
rail,--and I wanted, very much, to go that way--although it would be
cheaper to return by sea,--for I had a great desire to go through North
and South Carolina and Virginia, and see Washington. It would have
seemed like a shame to go back by sea, and miss all this. But, as I
said, I had barely enough money for this trip, and to make it I must
start the next day. And there was no use writing home for money. I knew
there was none there to spare, and I wouldn't have asked for it if there
had been. If there was any travelling money, some of the others ought to
have it. I had had my share.

It was very different with Rectus and the Chippertons. They could afford
to take this trip, and there was no reason why they shouldn't take it.

When I told them this, Uncle Chipperton flashed up in a minute, and said
that that was all stuff and nonsense,--the trip shouldn't cost me a
cent. What was the sense, he said, of thinking of a few dollars when
such pleasure was in view? He would see that I had no money-troubles,
and if that was all, I could go just as well as not. Didn't he owe me
thousands of dollars?

All this was very kind, but it didn't suit me. I knew that he did not
owe me a cent, for if I had done anything for him, I made no charge for
it. And even if I had been willing to let him pay my expenses,--which I
wasn't,--my father would never have listened to it.

So I thanked him, but told him the thing couldn't be worked in that
way, and I said it over and over again, until, at last, he believed it.
Then he offered to lend me the money necessary, but this offer I had to
decline, too. As I had no way of paying it back, I might as well have
taken it as a gift. There wasn't anything he could offer, after this,
except to get me a free pass; and as he had no way of doing that, he
gave up the job, and we all went down to supper. That evening, as I was
putting a few things into a small valise which I had bought,--as our
trunks were lost on the "Tigris," I had very little trouble in packing
up,--I said to Rectus that by the time he started off he could lay in a
new stock of clothes. I had made out our accounts, and had his money
ready to hand over to him, but I knew that his father had arranged for
him to draw on a Savannah bank, both for the tug-boat money and for
money for himself. I think that Mr. Colbert would have authorized me to
do this drawing, if Rectus had not taken the matter into his own hands
when he telegraphed. But it didn't matter, and there wasn't any tug-boat
money to pay, any way, for Uncle Chipperton paid that. He said it had
all been done for his daughter, and he put his foot down hard, and
wouldn't let Rectus hand over a cent.

"I wont have any more time than you will have," replied Rectus, "for I'm
going to-morrow."

"I didn't suppose they'd start so soon," I said "I'm sure there's no
need of any hurry."

"I'm not going with them," said Rectus, putting a lonely shirt into a
trunk that he had bought. "I'm going home with you."

I was so surprised at this that I just stared at him.

"What do you mean?" said I.

"Mean?" said he. "Why, just what I say. Do you suppose I'd go off with
them, and let you straggle up home by yourself? Not any for me, thank
you. And besides, I thought you were to take charge of me. How would you
look going back and saying you'd turned me over to another party?"

[Illustration: "YOU'RE A REGULAR YOUNG TRUMP."]

"You thought I was to take charge of you, did you?" I cried. "Well,
you're a long time saying so. You never admitted that before."

"I had better sense than that," said Rectus, with a grin. "But I don't
mind saying so now, as we're pretty near through with our travels. But
father told me expressly that I was to consider myself in your charge."

"You young rascal!" said I. "And he thought that you understood it so
well that there was no need of saying much to me about it. All that he
said expressly to me was about taking care of your money. But I tell you
what it is, Rectus, you're a regular young trump to give up that trip,
and go along with me."

And I gave him a good slap on the back.

He winced at this, and let drive a pillow at me, so hard that it nearly
knocked me over a chair.

The next morning, after an early breakfast, we went to bid the
Chippertons good-bye. We intended to walk to the depot, and so wanted to
start early. I was now cutting down all extra expenses.

"Ready so soon!" cried Uncle Chipperton, appearing at the door of his
room. "Why, we haven't had our breakfast yet."

"We have to make an early start, if we go by the morning train," said I,
"and we wanted to see you all before we started."

"Glad to see you at any hour of the night or day,--always very glad to
see you; but I think we had better be getting our breakfast, if the
train goes so early."

"Are you going to start to-day?" I asked, in surprise.

"Certainly," said he. "Why shouldn't we? I bought a new suit of clothes
yesterday, and my wife and Corny look well enough for travelling
purposes. We can start as well as not, and I'd go in my green trousers
if I hadn't any others. My dear," he said, looking into the room, "you
and Corny must come right down to breakfast."

"But perhaps you need not hurry," I said. "I don't know when the train
for Mobile starts."

"Mobile!" he cried. "Who's going to Mobile? Do you suppose that _we_
are? Not a bit of it. When I proposed that trip, I didn't propose it for
Mrs. Chipperton, or Corny, or myself, or you, or Rectus, or Tom, or
Dick, or Harry. I proposed it for all of us. If all of us cannot go,
none of us can. If you must go north this morning, so must we. We've
nothing to pack, and that's a comfort. Nine o'clock, did you say? You
may go on to the depot, if you like, and we'll eat our breakfasts, take
a carriage, and be there in time."

They were there in time, and we all went north together.

We had a jolly trip. We saw Charleston, and Richmond, and Washington,
and Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and at last we saw Jersey City, and our
folks waiting for us in the great depot of the Pennsylvania railroad.

When I saw my father and mother and my sister Helen standing there on
the stone foot-walk, as the cars rolled in, I was amazed. I hadn't
expected them. It was all right enough for Rectus to expect his father
and mother, for they lived in New York, but I had supposed that I should
meet my folks at the station in Willisville. But it was a capital idea
in them to come to New York. They said they couldn't wait at home, and
besides, they wanted to see and know the Chippertons, for we all seemed
so bound together, now.

Well, it wasn't hard to know the Chippertons. Before we reached the
hotel where my folks were staying, and where we all went to take
luncheon together, any one would have thought that Uncle Chipperton was
really a born brother to father and old Mr. Colbert. How he did talk!
How everybody talked! Except Helen. She just sat and listened and looked
at Corny--a girl who had been shipwrecked, and had been on a little raft
in the midst of the stormy billows. My mother and the two other ladies
cried a good deal, but it was a sunshiny sort of crying, and wouldn't
have happened so often, I think, if Mrs. Chipperton had not been so
ready to lead off.

After luncheon we sat for two or three hours in one of the parlors, and
talked, and talked, and talked. It was a sort of family congress.
Everybody told everybody else what he or she was going to do, and took
information of the same kind in trade. I was to go to college in the
fall, but as that had been pretty much settled long ago, it couldn't be
considered as news. I looked well enough, my father said, to do all the
hard studying that was needed; and the professor was anxiously waiting
to put me through a course of training for the happy lot of Freshman.

"But he's not going to begin his studies as soon as he gets home," said
my mother. "We're going to have him to ourselves for a while." And I did
not doubt that. I hadn't been gone very long, to be sure, but then a
ship had been burned from under me, and that counted for about a year's
absence.

Corny's fate had been settled, too, in a general way, but the discussion
that went on about a good boarding-school for her showed that a
particular settlement might take some time. Uncle Chipperton wanted her
to go to some school near his place on the Hudson River, so that he
could drive over and see her every day or two, and Mrs. Colbert said she
thought that that wouldn't do, because no girl could study as she ought
to, if her father was coming to see her all the time, and Uncle
Chipperton wanted to know what possible injury she thought he would do
his daughter by going to see her; and Mrs. Colbert said, none at all, of
course she didn't mean that, and Mrs. Chipperton said that Corny and her
father ought really to go to the same school, and then we all laughed,
and my father put in quickly, and asked about Rectus. It was easy to see
that it would take all summer to get a school for Corny.

"Well," said Mr. Colbert, "I've got a place for Sammy. Right in my
office. He's to be a man of business, you know. He never took much to
schooling. I sent him travelling so that he could see the world, and get
himself in trim for dealing with it. And that's what we have to do in
our business. Deal with the world."

I didn't like this, and I don't think Rectus did, either. He walked over
to one of the windows, and looked out into the street.

"I'll tell you what I think, sir," said I. "Rectus--I mean your son
Samuel, only I shall never call him so--has seen enough of the world to
make him so wide awake that he sees more in schooling than he used to.
That's my opinion!"

I knew that Rectus rather envied my going to college, for he had said as
much on the trip home; and I knew that he had hoped his father would let
him make a fresh start with the professor at our old school.

"Sammy," cried out Mrs. Colbert,--"Sammy, my son, do you want to go to
school, and finish up your education, or go into your father's office,
and learn to be a merchant?"

Rectus turned around from the window.

"There's no hurry about the merchant," he said. "I want to go to school
and college, first."

"And that's just where you're going," said his mother, with her face
reddening up a little more than common.

Mr. Colbert grinned a little, but said nothing. I suppose he thought it
would be of no use, and I had an idea, too, that he was very glad to
have Rectus determine on a college career. I know the rest of us were.
And we didn't hold back from saying so, either.

Uncle Chipperton now began to praise Rectus, and he told what
obligations the boy had put him under in Nassau, when he wrote to his
father, and had that suit about the property stopped, and so relieved
him--Uncle Chipperton--from cutting short his semi-tropical trip, and
hurrying home to New York in the middle of winter.

"But the suit isn't stopped," said Mr. Colbert. "You don't suppose I
would pay any attention to a note like the one Sammy sent me, do you? I
just let the suit go on, of course. It has not been decided yet, but I
expect to gain it."

At this, Uncle Chipperton grew very angry indeed. It was astonishing to
see how quickly he blazed up. He had supposed the whole thing settled,
and now to find that the terrible injustice--as he considered it--was
still going on, was too much for him.

"Do you sit there and tell me that, sir?" he exclaimed, jumping up and
skipping over to Mr. Colbert. "Do you call yourself----"

"Father!" cried Corny. "Keep perfectly cool! Remain just where you are!"

Uncle Chipperton stopped as if he had run against a fence. His favorite
advice went straight home to him.

"Very good, my child," said he, turning to Corny. "That's just what I'll
do."

And he said no more about it.

Now, everybody began to talk about all sorts of things, so as to seem as
if they hadn't noticed this little rumpus, and we agreed that we must
all see each other again the next day. Father said he should remain in
the city for a few days, now that we were all here, and Uncle Chipperton
did not intend to go to his country-place until the weather was warmer.
We were speaking of several things that would be pleasant to do
together, when Uncle Chipperton broke in with a proposition:

"I'll tell you what I am going to do. I am going to give a dinner to
this party. I can't invite you to my house, but I shall engage a parlor
in a restaurant, where I have given dinners before (we always come to
New York when I want to give dinners--it's so much easier for us to come
to the city than for a lot of people to come out to our place), and
there I shall give you a dinner, to-morrow evening. Nobody need say
anything against this. I've settled it, and I can't be moved."

As he couldn't be moved, no one tried to move him.

"I tell you what it is," said Rectus privately to me. "If Uncle
Chipperton is going to give a dinner, according to his own ideas of
things in general, it will be a curious kind of a meal."

It often happened that Rectus was as nearly right as most people.




CHAPTER XXIII.

UNCLE CHIPPERTON'S DINNER.


The next day was a busy one for father and mother and myself. All the
morning we were out, laying in a small stock of baggage, to take the
place of what I had lost on the "Tigris." But I was very sorry,
especially on my sister Helen's account, that I had lost so many things
in my trunk which I could not replace, without going back myself to
Nassau. I could buy curiosities from those regions that were ever so
much better than any that I had collected; but I could not buy shells
that I myself had gathered, nor great seed-pods, like bean-pods two feet
long, which I had picked from the trees, nor pieces of rock that I
myself had brought up from a coral-reef.

But these were all gone, and I pacified Helen by assuring her that I
would tell her such long stories about these things that she could
almost see them in her mind's eye. But I think, by the way she smiled,
that she had only a second-rate degree of belief in my power of
description. She was a smart little thing, and she believed that Corny
was the queen of girls.

While I am speaking of the "Tigris" and our losses, I will just say that
the second boat which left the burning steamer was never heard from.

We reached our hotel about noon, pretty tired, for we had been rushing
things, as it was necessary for father to go home early the next day. On
the front steps we found Uncle Chipperton, who had been waiting for us.
He particularly wanted to see me. He lunched with us, and then he took
me off to the place where he was to have his dinner, at six o'clock that
evening. He wanted to consult with me about the arrangements of the
table; where each person should sit, and all that sort of thing. I
couldn't see the use in this, because it was only a kind of family
party, and we should all be sure to get seated, if there were chairs and
places enough. But Uncle Chipperton wanted to plan and arrange
everything until he was sure it was just right. That was his way.

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