Richard F. Burton - "Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1"

Robert Arnold - "The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections"

Emile Zola - "La Conquete De Plassans"

Emily Dickinson - "Poems [Series 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 History of a Mouthful of Bread

J >> Jean Mace >> The History of a Mouthful of Bread




There, little Miss Laugher! have you at last learned to value the
weight of the air, or _atmospheric pressure_ as it is more properly
called; since it is the force with which the atmosphere presses against
rather than weighs upon everything on the surface of the globe? It is
no joke, as you perceive, and it affords plenty of subject
forreflection. I have still to prove to you that I have not been making
fun of you with my calculations, and that the weight of air upon a
square inch is really what I have said--viz., fifteen pounds.

Now, there is a very simple way by which we might get to know your
strength, and tell its amount in figures, if one chose; namely, by
putting a weight on your arms--a heap of books, if you please--and
keep adding and adding to it, until those poor little arms were unable
to bear any more. Then weighing what they had borne, whether we should
find it to be ten or thirty pounds--I cannot guess how much it might
be at this distance--one might safely say, without fear of mistake,
"The strength of this young lady is equal to ten, twenty, or thirty
pounds"--in other words, "she represents a weight of ten, twenty, or
thirty pounds" and by a similar plan people have ascertained the
strength of the air--that is, the weight which it represents. They
have weighed what it is capable of carrying.

I told you lately that the whole surface of the earth was covered by
an immense army of little imps--otherwise called little air-springs,
which, compressed by the giant mass of their comrades above, all of
whom they have to carry on their backs, are always trying to protect
themselves, by pushing back everything which comes across them. Imagine
the bottom of a well. Our imps are permanently installed there as a
matter of course, and face to face with the water they push against
it, each one doing his best, on all points at once. As the pressure
is equal everywhere therefore, and always the same, there are no signs
of it to be seen.

Now insert in the water the end of a tube closed below by a cork which
exactly fits the interior, but which can be moved up and down in the
tube by means of a bar of iron or wood which runs through it. This is
called a _piston_, I may as well tell you as we go on.

When the piston rises in the tube, it drives before it, as it goes,
the air which was already there; and which cannot slip away down the
sides because the piston fits so closely to them all the way along.
The result of this is, that just underneath the piston there is a place
in the water to which the air cannot reach, and at that place the water
has no pressure upon it at all.

Now see what happens. Pressed upon heavily by the air in every other
part and place, like a mouse hunted by a cat, who finds at last a hole
through which to escape, the poor water darts at this and ascends the
tube close after the piston.

So far so good; but if the tube is very long, and the piston rises
rather high;--at thirty-three or thirty-four feet above the level of
the water it has to continue its ascent alone. The water parts company,
stopping quietly behind, half-way up the tube.

"What is the meaning of this?" you will ask.

It means that the force which presses on the well-water all round the
tube, and thus drives it up, has done all it can, and that our little
air-imps refuse to supply any more. The water which rises in the tube
has a weight of its own of course, and with this weight it presses,
as it is fair it should, on the water below. In proportion as the
piston rises, the column of water which follows it gets bigger and
bigger, and naturally its weight increases at the same time. At last
there comes a moment when this weight becomes such that its pressure
on the water below is equal to that with which the air-imps are pressing
on the water in the well. Thenceforth they may push as they please;
no more water will go up. They are in the same position now that they
were before, when their comrades (afterwards driven out by the piston)
were pressing upon the same point, which had only a moment's freedom;
and this water column of thirty-three or thirty-four feet holds them
in check, to exactly the same extent as the gay fellows whose place
it has taken.

Nothing is easier now than to calculate, even to a few grains almost,
the force of the pressure of air. One can get at the weight of water,
thank goodness! and it has been ascertained that our water-column will
weigh fifteen pounds if the tube is a square inch in size. You will
comprehend after this that it might be any size you may please to
imagine, without there being the slightest alteration in the height
of the column. The larger it is, the heavier will be the column of
water on the one hand; but on the other, the greater will be the number
of air-imps turned out; so it comes to the same thing in the end.

If you should feel any doubt about the correctness of this reasoning,
you have only to try the experiment over again, in a well, filled with
mercury for instance. Ask to be shown some pure mercury, which is also
called _Quicksilver_, because one wants to express melted silver,
apt to be constantly on the move; it is often to be met with in houses.
Mercury weighs thirteen and a half times more than water: according
to our calculations, therefore, it would take thirteen and a half times
less of it than of water to bring our little air-imps to reason. And
this is just what you will find happens; you will see the column of
mercury stop short exactly at the moment when it has attained the
orthodox weight of fifteen pounds; that is to say, at a height of
twenty-eight inches.

On the other hand, take some ether. You know that delicate spirit,
which smells so strong, which makes your hand feel cold if it is put
upon it, and which we give to sick people to inhale. Ether weighs
one-quarter less than water. In a well of ether you would therefore
see something quite different, and your column would rise without being
asked, to something like forty-three feet, exactly up to the point of
weighing--like the others--fifteen pounds to every square inch. Air
will not be replaced with less.

That, then, is the measure of its strength, or our scales are deceitful.



LETTER XIX.

THE ACTION OF THE LUNGS.

I hope I have told you enough, my dear child, to enable you fully to
estimate the force with which air presses upon everything on the surface
of the earth, and consequently upon our own bodies among the rest.

If you understand this, nothing is easier than to understand how air
comes and goes in our lungs.

When the cook wants to light her fire with two or three hot coals,
what does she do?

She takes the bellows and blows it, does she not?

But if she has no bellows at hand, what does she do? You answer at
once, she blows it herself with all the strength of her lungs.

By which it would seem--does it not?--that we are a sort of living
bellows, being able, in case of necessity, to act as a substitute for
the wood and leather ones of common use. And if we really possess the
power of doing the work of a bellows, may not this be because we have
within us some little machine of the nature of a bellows?

Exactly; and this fact gives me the opportunity of making you understand
the action of the lungs by explaining that of the bellows, which is
in everybody's hands, but which three-fourths of the people use, without
troubling themselves to inquire how it is made or acts.

"A bellows, as you know, is composed of two pieces of board, capable
of being separated and brought together again at will, and united by
a piece of leather so shaped and arranged that it doubles up when the
boards close, the intermediate space forming a firmly-closed box, the
size of which increases or diminishes at every movement of the boards.

"We take the bellows down to use it, and there are the boards, lying
flat upon each other, the box between them quite small. Is there
anything inside, do you think?

"Nothing," you answer; "the bellows is empty."

Do you think so really, my child? Do you think a tumbler is empty,
then, when you have drunk out its contents; and that jelly pots are
empty when all the jelly is eaten? There are not so many empty things
in the world, I assure you, as you suppose. You forget the air--that
monster who is always wanting to stretch himself out, and pushes against
everything he meets. He is an unceremonious gentleman, who takes
possession of every vacant place; as fast as you put a spoonful on
your plate, he takes up the room of the jelly which has been removed,
and at each mouthful you swallow, he slips into the place of the water
which goes away. When you think the glass and pot are empty, they are,
in reality, full of air. You cannot see it; but it is there, you may
rely upon it.

There is air, then, in the bellows-box, because there is air in every
place where there is nothing else to dispute possession with it. The
quantity is small in this case, no doubt, because the box is small and
cannot hold much.

But now, look! I separate the boards, and the box, which was small,
becomes large. For once, then, here is a box which must be partially
empty; for it has just, as if by magic, made a space in itself in which
positively there cannot be anything, since there was nothing there
beforehand.

Ay! but look down at the centre of the upper board. You see a little
hole there, do you not, and below the little hole a small piece of
leather, which seems to close it up? That is a _valve_, one of those
doors, such as we noticed before in the heart, and such as are to be
found, moreover, in most houses, which let people through on one side
but not on the other. This one opens when it is pushed from without, but
lets nothing out which has once got in. Now, the air outside, as I said
before, is always pushing against everything. He pushes as a matter of
course, therefore, against the valve, and as there is nothing behind it
to resist the pressure, in proportion as room is made inside the box, he
enters and fills it with himself.

But presently some one begins to close the bellows, and he finds himself
caught between the boards; on which these invite him to begone, with
the same sort of politeness displayed by the police, when the hour of
departure comes in a place of public exhibition; when, _i.e._,
they spread out on all sides, and force the crowd before them till
they have found the road to the door. But the air cannot get back by
the way it came in, the door being shut. As, however, it must go out
somewhere, whether it likes it or not, it passes through the tube at
the end of the box (the _nozzle_ of the bellows), and comes out
thence with a rush upon the fire. When it is once gone the bellows can
be distended again, and the process be repeated as before indefinitely.

And this is just what goes on inside ourselves. Your chest, my child,
is a box which expands and contracts alternately; making a place for
the air by the first effort, and then driving it out by the second.
It is neither more nor less than a bellows, but of a simpler
construction than that used by the cook. The exit pipe serves also for
a door of entrance, and there is but one board instead of two.

The _exit pipe_ is the _larynx_, of which we spoke before,
when we were talking of swallowing the wrong way, and which communicates
with the air outside, through the nose and mouth at the same time,
allowing us to breathe through either one or the other as we like.

As to the _board_, I said a few words about it when I was describing the
liver. It is the _diaphragm_--that separating partition--that floor
which is placed between the two stories or divisions of the body--the
belly and the chest.

But here especially the infinite superiority of the works of God over
the miserable inventions of man comes out in all its grandeur.

A bellows which was to have the honor of keeping up within us that
miraculous fire--the pre-eminently sacred fire--which we call Life,
required something more than a common board for its foundation. And
accordingly this, of which I am now going to give you a detailed
history, is as marvellous as it is admirable. I fancy that when you
have read my account, you will no longer turn up your nose at the vile
word _diaphragm_.

Let us first take a peep at the construction of the bellows.

On each side of the _vertebral column_, from the neck to the loins,
spring twelve long bones, one below the other, bent in the form of bows;
these are called the _ribs_. The first seven pairs of ribs rest, and as
it were, unite, in front, upon a bone called the _sternum_, which you
can trace with your finger down to the pit of the stomach, at which
point the finger sinks in, for there is no more _sternum_, and the last
five ribs on each side no longer unite with those of the opposite one.
For which reason they are called _false ribs_. On the other hand they
are joined to each other at the ends by means of a strip or band of a
substance sufficiently strong, but at the same time flexible, and
somewhat elastic, which is called _cartilage_ or _gristle_. The next
time you see a roasting piece of veal on the table, look well at it, and
you will see at the end a white substance which crackles under your
teeth; that is _gristle_.

This forms the framework of our bellows, which you may picture to
yourself as a kind of cage, widening towards the bottom and going to
a point at the top, for the arches formed by the upper ribs are smaller
than the others. The whole terminates in a sort of ring, through which
pass, together, the _oesophagus_ and the _trachea_.

The space between the ribs is occupied by muscles which reach from one
to the other, and the whole framework or cage is shut in below by the
_diaphragm_, that marvellous board whose history I have promised to
relate.

The _diaphragm_, as I told you some time ago, is a large muscle, thin
and flat, stretched like a cloth between the chest and the _abdomen_. It
is fastened by an infinity of little threads called _fibres_, to the
lower edge of the cage I have just been describing, and it looks at
first sight as if it must be incapable of moving, since it is fixed in
one invariable manner all round the body.

It moves nevertheless, but not in the same way as the boards of our
bellows.

Ask your brother to hold two corners of your pocket-handkerchief; take
hold of the other two yourself, and turn the handkerchief so as to
face the wind. The four corners remain in their place, do they not?
but the middle, inflated by the wind, curves and swells out in front
like a ship's sail, which itself is only an immense hand kerchief after
all. Then draw the handkerchief tightly towards you, each to your own
side, and it will recover itself and become flat again. Loosen it a
little and it will curve and swell out again in the middle, and this
maneuver you can go through as often as you choose.

Which very maneuver the _diaphragm_ is continually performing, of and by
itself.

In its natural position it bulges upwards in the middle, like a cloth
swollen out by the wind, and thus occupies a portion of the chest at
the expense of the lungs. When air has to be admitted, its _fibres_
tighten and bring it flat again, as you and your brother brought the
handkerchief flat just now by tightening it.

The whole space previously occupied by the arch of the _diaphragm_
is thus given up to the lungs, which, being elastic, instantly stretch
themselves out to it; while air, running in through the nose and mouth,
fills up in proportion the empty place (_vacuum_) created by the
extension of the lungs, exactly as in the case of the bellows.

But soon the fibres of the _diaphragm_ relax. It rises up again into its
old position, driving back the lungs as it does so; and the air finding
there is now no room for it, goes out by the same way the other came in.
I say _the other_, observe, because the air that goes out is no longer
the same as when it came in; and this is the secret of _why we breathe_;
while the up and down movement of the _diaphragm_ is the explanation of
_how we breathe_.

As you perceive, then, the mechanism of these bellows of ours, is of
the most simple, and consequently of the most ingenious character, and
leaves far behind it anything we have ever imagined.

Are you disappointed? Do you feel inclined to exclaim, "Is this all?"
to ask where are the wonders I promised you? to protest that I may
talk as I please about the inflating and flattening of a
pocket-handkerchief? _you_ can see nothing so marvellous in the
matter; nothing worth making your mouth water for.

A little patience, Mademoiselle! Hitherto we have talked only of the
machine; but there is a goblin inside it, and our fairy tale is going
to begin again.

There are in some families certain old servants who belong to the
house, more, it may be said, than their masters, in some ways. They
educate the children, and they serve them till death; they live for
them alone, and know so well what they have to do, both by day and
night, that there is no need to give them any orders. Nay, not only
is it unnecessary to give them directions--it is for the most part
labor in vain. They are so completely at home in their business, that
they will go nobody's way but their own. If you wish them to alter
their habits they may obey you for an instant, but it is only to return
into the old groove directly after; for they know better than you do
what you want.

I was very little when I first read in the story-books of my day, some
bitter complaints of the disappearance of this race of old-fashioned
servants of the good old times. And you very likely may have seen it
said that they are no longer to be met with. Yet there will always be
some, depend upon it, in families, who know how to make and to keep
them. Good old times or not, they have never been found in any other
but these cases.

Still, _I_ have just such a one as I have described--even I who
am talking to you--and so has your mamma; and what is more, you have
one yourself; and what is more still, everybody else has one. This
servant of the good old times, who will never disappear (and this is
more than one can promise of any other) is the _Diaphragm!_ When
you came into the world, my dear child, and were merely a poor little
lump of flesh, without strength, intelligence, or will; incapable of
giving any orders whatever to those organs of yours, of whose existence
you were not even aware, your _diaphragm_ quietly began his duties,
without leave or inquiry from you, and with your first _breath_ your
life began. Since which he has always gone on, whether you attended
to him or not, and his last effort will be your last sigh.

When you go to sleep, careless of all that is to happen, until you
awake again, that servant of yours, indefatigable at his post, labors
for you still, and the light breath which half opens your rosy little
lips as it passes through them; that light breath which your happy
mother watches with such pleasure, is his work. Midnight strikes--one
o'clock--two; all around you are buried in sleep--but he is awake
still. Were it otherwise--were he to go to sleep when you do, you
would never awake again!

This protector of each instant, this faithful guardian of your life,
is, nevertheless, subject to you as a servant to his master. Attend
to him, and he will obey your orders. You can make him go at a great
pace, or slowly, as you choose; or stop him altogether, if the fancy
takes you to do so: but this not for long. The servant of the good old
times is obstinate in the performance of his duties. He will yield to
you in trifles; but do not try to force him over serious matters. I
have read somewhere of a desperate young fellow, chained down in a
dungeon, who killed himself by holding his breath; but I never quite
believed it. Mr. Diaphragm would not allow any one to carry rebellion
so far as that.

But we have not finished yet, and you do not yet know how appropriate
is the comparison I am making.

Should any misfortune, any grief, any trifling annoyance even, befall
his master, a good servant suffers with him, and as much as he does;
sometimes even more. Occasionally the master is comforted, while he
remains still disturbed.

"And the diaphragm?" you ask.

The diaphragm does precisely the same, my dear child. Yours, especially,
shares in all your griefs to such an extent that, truth to say, he is
not always quite reasonable. The other day when your mamma did not
want to take you into the country with her, he was so sorry for you
that he went into perfect convulsions, and you sobbed and sobbed till
she was obliged to say, "Come, then, you naughty child;" whereupon you
embraced your mamma, and were quite happy again, while he remained
still unappeased, and your poor little chest was shaken more than once
afterwards by his last convulsions.

Sobbing, you must know, is merely a convulsion--a great shake of the
diaphragm--which is the reason of its causing such a heaving of the
chest.

It is the same with respect to joy. The joy of the master makes the
servant dance, and so the diaphragm too! Its little internal jumps
are, then, what we call laughter--a thing you are well acquainted with.
Put your hand on your chest next time you laugh (and I hope it will
be soon) and you will feel how it dances--thanks to the diaphragm which
jumps for joy whenever it finds you in good humor.

Please to observe further, that nothing of all this is done to order.
He starts of himself, poor fellow, without waiting to ask if you will
ever know anything about it; and, in truth, you have known nothing
about it up to the present moment.

What say you to the diaphragm now, my child? Does not the very name
please you? You scarcely expected to find there--under your lungs--so
good a servant, one so attached to your person, so strongly resembling
in all points the best specimens we know among men. And still we have
not done. I have reserved as a finale for you a new point of resemblance
which will make you open your eyes very wide indeed.

The old servant is sometimes cross and grumbling. If anything is going
against his grain in the house he has no scruple in saying so; and his
mode of speaking is sometimes rather rude. Nor is it of any use to get
impatient and impose silence on him; he will listen to nothing--it is
his privilege. But let some unforeseen accident happen to his master,
let him see him deeply affected, and in a moment all his anger is over.
He sets himself silently to work again, recalled to order twenty times
sooner by his master's emotion than by his utmost impatience.

You ask what I am coming to now? My dear child, what I have just told
you is the history of the _hiccup_--the history of the hiccup, neither
more nor less.

I must first tell you, however, that the _diaphragm_ keeps up
intimate relations with his neighbor below--the stomach. Every time
he rises in the breast the stomach rises behind him; and not only the
stomach, but also its companions, the intestines. All the officials
employed in the business of digestion travel regularly with him; coming
down as well as going up in company. Put your hand upon your abdomen
and breathe strongly and you will feel the rebound of all the movements
of the diaphragm.

Now, when matters are going on wrongly inside, when too much work has
been imposed on the officials, or work they dislike, or else when they
have been disturbed in their labors, it will sometimes happen that the
_diaphragm_ takes part with his comrades in the abdomen. He gets
angry then, and shakes his master, who cannot help himself a bit. You
must be very well acquainted with these attacks, which are very
fatiguing when they last long. One begs pardon and resists him in vain;
he does as he pleases, without stopping to listen, turning everything
upside down; and do you know the only efficacious plan for calming him
at once? It was a constant source of wonder to me when I was little.
A sudden fright, a start unexpectedly caused by a friendly hand slipping
secretly behind, and laying hold of one, was all-sufficient; disarmed
by the agitation you have undergone, the naughty, stubborn muscle
forgives you, and you are cured.

Having dwelt so long on the truly wonderful resemblance between the
proceedings of two sorts of beings, whom no one that I know of ever
thought of comparing together before, I will now, my dear child, give
you the key to all these comparisons, which seem so whimsical at first,
but are so striking in reality, and which come to my pen of their own
accord, as it were, in the midst of the explanations I have undertaken
to give you. Many people who would not themselves care for them, will
declare that they are too hard for a little girl to follow. But for
my own part, I find that the eye can take in a mountain as easily as
a fly, and that it is not more difficult to lay hold of great ideas
than of little ones. It is short-sighted people, not children, who
cannot see far before them. Who made the heavens and the earth? God,
your catechism tells you. The same God made both; did he not? We do
not acknowledge two. And if it be the self-same God who made everything,
the hand of the universal Maker will be found everywhere; and from the
highest to the lowest portion of His work the same mind will manifest
itself under a thousand different forms. Not only, either, is each man
separately, one by one, the work of God. The whole human race, taken
in the mass, is also His creation; and the laws by which human
society--that great body of the human race--seeks to regulate itself
for the preservation of its existence, are undoubtedly the same as
those which overruled the organization of our individual bodies. It
is not very astonishing, then, if we find, in the life of human society
around us, details corresponding with each detail of the life of the
human body, or, at any rate, closely resembling them. What would really
be astonishing, would be that mankind as a whole should be differently
constituted from man as an individual, and that human society should
have other appointed conditions of well-being than those of each of
its members.

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