C. N. Williamson - "A Soldier of the Legion"

Henrik Ibsen - "Little Eyolf"

Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire - "Lone Star Planet"

Matthew L. Davis - "Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Volume 1."

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 City of Fire

G >> Grace Livingston Hill >> The City of Fire




"And had you forgotten," said the minister tenderly, "That the blood of
Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin? And that he said, 'Come
now and let us reason together, Though your sins be as scarlet they
shall be as white as snow?'"

"I gave up all right to that when I gave up God on the mountain."

"But God did not give up you," said the minister. "Do you think a true
father would cast out a child because it got angry and shook its fist
in his face? You will find Him again when you search for Him with all
your heart. You have told Him you were sorry, and He has promised to
forgive. You can't save yourself, but He can save you. Now, son, go and
tell Marilyn everything."

"Do you mean it,--_Father?"_

"I mean it--_Son_. The doctor is coming by and by to take off
these bandages, and I want the first thing that my eyes rest upon after
my dear wife's face, to be the faces of you two. My beloved children."

* * * * *

Sabbath Valley lay tucked warm and white beneath a blanket of snow. All
the week it had been coming down, down, in great white flakes of
especially sorted sizes, filling the air mightily with winter clean and
deep. Here in the fastnesses of the hills it seemed that the treasure
troves of the sky had been opened to make all beautiful and quiet while
winter passed that way. Lone Valley was almost obliterated, pierced
with sharp pine trees in bunches here and there, like a flock of pins
in a pincushion, and the hills rose gently on either side like a vast
amphitheatre done in white and peopled thick with trees in heavy white
furs.

The Highway was almost impassable for a day or two, but the state snow
plow passed over as soon as the snow stopped falling, and left a white
pavement with white walls either side. The tunnel through the mountains
was only a black dot in the vast whiteness, and Pleasant View Station
wore a heavy cap of snow dripping down in lavish fringes edged with
icicles. The agent's little shanty up the mountain was buried out of
sight behind a snow drift and had to be dug out from the back, and no
Lake Train ran any more. The express was five hours late. Stark
Mountain loomed white against the sky. And over in Sabbath Valley the
night it stopped snowing all the villagers were out shovelling their
walks and calling glad nothings back and forth as they flung the white
star dust from their shovels, and little children came out with rubber
boots and warm leggings and wallowed in the beauty. The milkman got out
an old sleigh and strung a line of bells around his horse. The boys and
girls hurried up the mountain to their slide with home made sleds and
laughing voices, and the moon came up looking sweetly from a sudden
clearing sky.

Over in the church the windows shone with light, and the bells were
ringing out the old sweet songs the villagers loved. Marilyn was at the
organ and Mark by her side. In the body of the church willing hands
were working, setting up the tall hemlocks that Tom and Jim had brought
in from the mountain, till the little church was fragrant and literally
lined with lacey beauty, reminding one of ancient worship in the woods.
Holly wreaths were hanging in the windows everywhere, and ropes of
ground pine and laurel festooned from every pillar and corner and peak
of roof.

Laurie Shafton had sent a great coffer of wonderful roses, and the
country girls were handling them with awe, banking them round the
pulpit, and trailing them over the rail of the little choir loft,
wonderful roses from another world, the world that Marilyn Severn might
have married into if she had chosen. And there sat Marilyn as
indifferent as if they were dandelions, praising the _trees_ that
had been set up, delighting in their slender tops that rose like
miniature spires all round the wall, drawing in the sweetness of their
winter spicy breath, and never saying a word about the roses. "Roses?
Oh, yes, they look all right, Girls, just put them wherever you fancy.
I'll be suited. But aren't those trees too beautiful for words?"

When the work was done they trooped out noisily into the moonlight,
bright like day only with a beauty that was almost unearthly in its
radiance. The others went on down the street calling gay words back and
forth, but Mark and Marilyn lingered, bearing a wreath of laurel, and
stepping deep into the whiteness went over to the white piled mound
where they had laid Mrs. Carter's body to rest and Mark stooped down
and pressed the wreath down into the snow upon the top:

"Dear little mother," he said brokenly, "She loved pretty things and I
meant to give her so many of them sometime to make up--"

"But she'll be glad--" said Marilyn softly, "We loved each other very
much--!"

"Yes, she'll be glad!" he answered. "She often tried to find out why I
never went to the parsonage any more. Poor little mother! That was her
deepest disappointment--! Yes, she'll be glad--!"

* * * * *

When morning came it seemed as though the very glory of God was spread
forth on Sabbath Valley for display. There it lay, a shining gem of a
little white town, in the white velvet cup of the Valley, dazzling and
resplendent, the hills rising round about reflecting more brightness
and etched with fringes of fine branches each burdened with a line of
heavy furry white. Against the clear blue sky the bell tower rose, and
from its arches the bells rang forth a wedding song. Marilyn in her
white robes, with a long white veil of rare old lace handed down
through the generations, falling down the back and fastened about her
forehead, and with a slim little rope of pearls, also an heirloom, was
ringing her own wedding bells, with Mark by her side, while the
villagers gathered outside the door waiting for the wedding march to
begin before they came in.

The minister and his wife stood back in his little study behind the
pulpit, watching their two with loving eyes, and down by the front door
stood Billy in a new suit with his hair very wet and licked back from
an almost crimson countenance, waiting the word to fling open the door
and let the congregation in.

"_Tum_, diddy_dum_--Diddy_dum_--diddy_dum_--
Diddy_dum_--diddy_dum_--Diddydum--_dum_--_dum_--
Dum--Dum--Dum!" began the organ and Billy flung the portals wide and
stood aside on the steps to let the throng pass in, his eyes shining as
if they would say, "Aw Gee! Ain't this great?"

And just at that moment, wallowing through the snow, with the air of
having come from the North Pole there arrived a great car and drew up
to the door, and Laurie Shafton jumped anxiously out and flung open the
door for his passengers.

"Aw Gee! That Fish! Whadde wantta come here for? The great
_chump_! Don't he know he ain't _in it?_"

Billy watched in lofty scorn from his high step and decided to hurry in
and not have to show any honors to that sissy-guy.

Then out from the car issued Opal, done in furs from brow to shoe and
looking eagerly about her, and following her a big handsome sporty man
almost twice her age, looking curiously interested, as if he had come
to a shrine to worship, Opal's husband. Billy stared, and then
remembering that the wedding march was almost over and that he might be
missing something:

"Aw, Gee! Whadduw I care? He ain't little apples now, anyhow. He
couldn'ta bought her with _barrels_ of roses, an' he knows it too,
the poor stiff. He must be a pretty good scout after all, takin' his
medicine straight!"

Then Billy slid in and the quiet little ceremony began.

The organ hushed into nothing. Marilyn arose, took Mark's arm, and
together they stepped down and stood in front of the minister, who had
come down the steps of the pulpit and was awaiting them, with Marilyn's
mother sitting only a step away on the front seat.

It was all so quiet and homey, without fuss or marching or any such
thing, and when the ceremony was over the bride and groom turned about
in front of the bank of hemlock and roses and their friends swarmed up
to congratulate them. Then everybody went into the parsonage, where the
ladies of the church had prepared a real country wedding breakfast with
Christmas turkey and fixings for a foundation and going on from that.
It wasn't every day in the year that Sabbath Valley got its minister's
daughter married, and what if the parsonage _was_ small and only
fifty could sit down at once, everybody was patient, and it was all the
more fun!

The three guests from out of town, self imposed, looked on with wonder
and interest. It was a revelation. Marilyn looked up and found big Ed
Verrons frankly staring at her, a puzzled pleased expression on his
large coarse face. She was half annoyed and wondered why they had come
to spoil this perfect day. Then suddenly the big man stepped across the
little living room and spoke:

"Mrs. Carter, we came over to-day because Opal said you had something
that would help us begin over again and make life more of a success. I
want to thank you for having this chance to see a little bit of heaven
on earth before I die."



Later, when the city guests were fed and comforted perhaps, and had
climbed back into the big car, Billy stood on the front porch with a
third helping of ice cream and watched them back, and turn, and wallow
away into the deep white world, and his heart was touched with pity:

"Aw, Gee! The poor fish! I'spose it is hard lines! And then it was
sorta my faultchu know," and he turned with a joyful sigh that they
were gone, and went in to look again at Mary Louise Little, and see
what it was about her in that new blue challis that made her look so
sorta nice to-day.

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