William Edmonstoune Aytoun - "The Bon Gaultier Ballads"

M. E. Braddon - "Henry Dunbar"

E. Phillips Oppenheim - "The Box with Broken Seals"

Mark Lemon - "The Jest Book"

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




I said that without this coating of enamel, the teeth would be
prematurely worn out, the reason of which is, that the teeth have not
the property of growing again, as the nails and hair have. When those
little germs of which I spoke when we began to describe the teeth,
have finished their work, they perish and fall out, like masons who,
when they have built the house, take their departure forever.

But the "forever" wants explanation. For such stern conditions would
fall hard on very little children, who, not having come to their reason,
cannot be expected to understand the great value of their teeth, and
take all the care they need of them. So to them _a second_ chance
is given.

Your first teeth, the _milk-teeth_, as they are called, count for
nothing: they are a kind of specimen, just to serve while you are very
young.

When you are approaching what is called the age of reason, (and this
word implies a great deal, my dear child,) the real teeth, the teeth
which are to serve you for life, begin to whisper among themselves,
"Now, here is a little girl who is becoming reasonable, and who will
soon, or else never, be fit to take charge of her teeth." No sooner
said than done: other masons set to work in other cells, placed under
the first set, and as the permanent teeth keep growing and growing,
they gradually push out the milk-teeth, which were only keeping their
places ready for them till they came.

This is just your case at present, and you now understand your
responsibility, and how necessary it is to preserve those good teeth
which have placed so generous a confidence in your care of them, and
which, once gone, can never be replaced.

You have no loss by the exchange; you had twenty-four at first, you
will now have twenty-eight. Twenty-eight, did I say? nay, you will
have thirty-two; but the last four will come later still. The last
_molars_ on each side, above and below, in both jaws, will not
make their appearance till you are grown up. They are a fastidious and
timid set, and will not run any risks; and they are called
_wisdom-teeth_, because they do not appear till we are supposed
to have arrived at years of discretion. Some people do not cut them
before they are thirty, and you will agree that, if they have not
become wise by that time, they have but a very poor chance of ever
being so!

There is much more still to be said about the teeth; but I think I
have told you quite enough to teach you the importance of these little
bony possessions of yours, which children do not always value as they
deserve, and whose safety they endanger as carelessly as if they had
fresh supplies of them ready in their pockets. If so many skilful
contrivances have been devised for enabling us to masticate our food
properly, it is clear that this process is not an unimportant one.
Those, therefore, who swallow a mouthful after two or three turns,
forget that they are thereby forcing the stomach to do the work the
teeth have neglected to do, and this is very bad economy, I can assure
you. You will see hereafter, when we speak about animals, that by a
marvellous compensation of nature, the power of the stomach is always
great in proportion to the _in_efficiency of the teeth, and that
by the same rule, it is weakest when the jaws are best furnished. Now,
no jaw is more completely furnished than the human one; it is clear,
then, that it should do its own work and not leave it to be done by
those who are less able: and the little girl who, in order to finish
her dinner more quickly, shirks the use of her teeth, and sends food,
half chewed, into her stomach, is like a man who, having two servants,
the one strong and vigorous, the other feeble and delicate, allows the
first to dawdle at his ease, and puts all the hard work on the other.
He would be very unjust in so doing, would he not? And as injustice
always meets with its reward, his work is sure to be badly done.

Now, the work in question consists in reducing what we eat into a sort
of pulp or liquid paste, from which the blood extracts at last whatever
it requires. But the teeth may bite and tear the materials as they
please, they can make nothing of them but a powder, which would never
turn into a pulp, if during their labors they were not assisted by an
indispensable auxiliary. To make pap for infants what do we add to the
bread after it is cut in little bits? Without being a very clever cook,
you will know that it is water which is wanted. And thus, to assist
us in making pap for the blood, Providence has furnished us with a
number of small spongy organs within the mouth, which are always filled
with water. These are called _salivary glands_. This water oozes
out from them of itself, on the least movement of the jaw, which presses
upon the sponges as it goes up and down. The name of this water, as
I need scarcely tell you, is _saliva_.

When I call it water, it is not merely from its resemblance; _saliva_ is
really pure water with a little _albumen_ added. Do not be afraid of
that word--it is not so alarming as it appears to be. It means simply
the substance you know as the _white of egg_. There is also a little
soda in the water, which you know is one of the ingredients of which
soap is made. And this explains why the saliva becomes frothy, when the
cheeks and tongue set it in motion in the mouth while we are talking;
just as the whites of egg, or soapy water, become frothy when whipped up
or beaten in a basin.

But the albumen and the soda have not been added to the saliva, in our
case, merely to make it frothy; that would have been of very little
use. They give to the water a greater power to dissolve the food into
paste, and thus to begin that series of transformations by which it
gradually becomes the fine red blood which shows itself in little drops
at the tip of your finger when you have been using your needle
awkwardly.

When once minced up by the teeth and moistened by the saliva, the food
is reduced to a state of pulp, and having nothing further to do in the
mouth, is ready to pass forward. But getting out of the mouth on its
journey downwards is not so simple an affair as getting into it by the
_front door_, as it did at first. Swallowing is in fact a complicated
action, and not to be explained in half a dozen words, and I think we
have already chatted enough for to-day. I only wish I may not have tired
you out with these interminable teeth! But you may expect something
quite new when I begin again.



LETTER VII.

THE THROAT.

You remember a certain door-keeper, or porter, of whom we have already
spoken a good deal, who resides in the mouth--the sense of taste, I
mean?

Well, it is a porter's business to sweep out the entrance to a house,
and you may always recognize him in the courtyard by his broom.

And accordingly our porter too has a broom specially placed at his
service, namely, the tongue; and an unrivalled broom it is--for it is
self-acting, never wears out, and makes no dust--qualities we cannot
succeed in obtaining in any brooms of our own manufacture.

When the time has come for the pounded mouthful (described in the last
chapter) to travel forward (the teeth having properly prepared it),
the broom begins its work; scouring all along the gums, twisting and
turning right and left, backwards and forwards, up and down; picking
up the least grains of the pulp which have been manufactured in the
mouth; and as the heap increases, it makes itself into a shovel--another
accomplishment one would scarcely have expected it to possess. What
it gathers together thus, rolls by degrees on its surface into a ball,
which at last finds itself fixed between the palate and the tongue in
such a manner that it cannot escape; at which moment the tongue presses
its tip against the upper front teeth, forms of itself an inclined
plane, and--but stop! we are getting on too fast.

At the back of the mouth, (which is the antechamber, as we said before,)
is a sort of lobby, separated from the mouth by a little fleshy
tongue_let_, suspended to the palate, exactly like those tapestry
curtains which are sometimes hung between two rooms, under which one
is enabled to pass, by just lifting them up.

If this lobby led only from the mouth to the stomach, the act of
swallowing would be the simplest thing in the world; the tongue would
be raised, the pounded ball would glide on, would pass under the
curtain, and then good-bye to it. Unfortunately, however, the architect
of the house seems to have economized his construction-apparatus here.
The lobby serves two purposes; it is the passage from the mouth to the
stomach, as well as from the nose to the lungs.

The air we breathe has its two separate doors there--one opening
towards the nose, the other towards the lungs; through neither of which
is any sort of food allowed to pass. But, as you may imagine, the food
itself knows nothing of such spiteful restraints, and it is a matter
of perfect indifference to it through which of the doors it passes.
Not unlike a good many children who, though they are reasonable
creatures, will push their way into places where they have been
forbidden to go; and who can expect a pulpy food-ball to be more
reasonable than a child? It was necessary, therefore, so to arrange
matters that there should be no choice on the subject; that when the
food-ball got into the lobby it should find no door open but its own,
namely, that which led to the stomach. And that is exactly what is
done.

You have not, perhaps, remarked that in the act of swallowing, something
rises and contracts itself at the same moment in your throat, producing
a kind of internal convulsion which jerks whatever is inside. People
do not think about it when they are eating, because it is an involuntary
action, and their attention is otherwise engaged.

But try to swallow when there is nothing in your mouth, and you will
perceive what I mean at once.

Now, imagine our lobby at the back of the throat as a small closet,
with a doorway in its wall, half-way up, the doorway being closed by
a curtain. In the ceiling is a hole, which leads to the nose; in the
floor two large tubes open out; the front one leading to the lungs,
the one behind, to the stomach.

Now swallow, and I will tell you what happens. The curtain rises up
and clings to the ceiling, and thus the passage to the nose is stopped
up. The lung-tube rises along the wall, and hides itself under the
door, contracting itself, and making itself quite small, as if it
wished to leave plenty of room for the mouthful of food which is about
to pass over it; and, for still greater security, at the very moment
it rises, it pushes against a small trap-door which shuts up its mouth.
No other road remains, therefore, but through the tube which leads to
the stomach; the pulpy mouthful drops straight therein, without risk
of mistake, and when it is once there, everything readjusts itself as
before.

These are very ingenious contrivances, and I will venture to say that
if we would but study the wonders of the marvellous and varied machinery
which is constantly at work in our behalf within us, we should be much
better employed than in learning things from which no practical good
can be derived. Moreover, we should be ashamed to trust, like the lower
animals, only to our instinct, (which, after all, is much less developed
in us than in them,) for blindly escaping the thousand chances of
destruction that beset a structure so fragile and delicate in its
contrivances as the human body. Besides, it is not only our own
machinery that is entrusted to us, we are liable to be responsible for
that of others, whose development it is our duty to guard and watch;
and how can we do this with a safe conscience, if we are ignorant of
the construction, the action, the laws of all sorts which the great
Artificer has, so to speak, made use of in forming our bodies?

When you, in your turn, are a mother, you dear little rogue, who sit
there opening wide your bright eyes, and not comprehending a word of
what I am saying, you will be glad that you were taught when you were
little, how your own little girl ought to be managed. You will find
a hundred opportunities of making good use, in her behalf, of what you
and I are learning together, and in the meantime there is no reason
why you should not yourself profit by the knowledge you have gained.

I am quite sure, for instance, that in repeating to your child the
simple rule of politeness, with which everybody is acquainted, "_Never
talk when you are eating_," you will be very careful to add, "_and
especially when you are swallowing_," for reasons I am about to detail.

When we want to speak we have to drive the air from the lungs into the
mouth, and our words are sounds produced by this air as it passes
through. This is the reason why I advise you to go on gently, and make
the proper stops in reading aloud: to _take breath_, in fact, as
it is called; otherwise, breath would all at once fail you, and you
would be obliged to stop short in the middle of a sentence and wait
like a simpleton till you had refilled the lungs with air by breathing.
It was for this purpose, also, and not for mere economy's sake, as you
may have thought, that the little cross-road of four doors has been
placed at the back of the mouth, enabling it to communicate at pleasure
with either the lungs or the stomach. It is a dangerous passage for
food-parcels making their way to the stomach; but if you could
substitute for it, as it may have occurred to you to do lately, a
simple tube going directly to the stomach,--behold! you would find
yourself dumb;--a serious misfortune, eh? for a little girl! But come,
I am quizzing too much, so console yourself. I know many grown-up
people who would be at least as sorry as yourself.

To return to our subject. We have said that, in order to guard against
accidents, the lung-tube is closed at the moment we are about to
swallow. But if by any unlucky chance the air is coming up from the
lungs at the same moment, it must have a free passage. Its tube cannot
help returning to its place; the little trap-door which shuts up the
opening opens whether or no, and then adieu to all the precautions of
good Mother Nature! The mouthful when it drops, falls outside of its
proper tube--that is to say, into the other, which is exactly in front
of it, and we find that we have _swallowed the wrong way_.

You know what happens in such a case. You cough and cough till you are
torn to pieces, till you grow scarlet, or even blue in the face; till
you lose your breath; till your body trembles; till your eyes start
out of their sockets. Let who will be there, there is no resource but
to hide your face in your handkerchief. The tube, which was only made
for the passage of air, on finding an intruder forcing an entrance,
does its utmost to drive it back through the door. Then the lungs,
which would be destroyed by its getting to them, come to the assistance
of the faithful servant who is struggling for their protection: they
agitate themselves violently, and send forth gusts of air which drive
all before them. Thence arises the cough, and by this means at last
the enemy is thrust out of the mouth, like dust before the wind. And
it is only when the passages are cleared that the storm subsides. But
the commotion is no laughing matter, I assure you; for if one had
swallowed a little _too far_ the wrong way, or if the substance
swallowed had been too heavy for the air-tube, aided by the lungs, to
eject within a certain time, death would have ensued: instances of
which are by no means unknown. Nature does nothing in vain; this is
no case of a man frightened by a mouse. When you find your whole being
concentrating its efforts to one point, and betraying such distress,
at an accident apparently so trifling, you may be sure there is danger,
and real danger too; and if you doubt it, that makes no
difference--happily for you.

Now you have learned why little girls should not attempt to talk and
swallow at the same time, and, I may add, still less laugh; for
laughingis a kind of somersault, performed by the lungs, and is always
accompanied by the ejectment of a great deal more breath than is
necessary in speaking, so that the jerks it occasions derange still
more the wise provisions made to protect life whenever we swallow
anything, and therefore we are more apt to swallow the wrong way while
laughing than while speaking.

Need I say that we ought equally to guard against making others laugh
or talk; or exciting, or frightening them, while they are swallowing;
in short, avoid doing anything to create a sudden shock which might
suddenly force the air out of their lungs, and cause them in the same
manner to swallow the wrong way? Politeness requires this from us, and
what I have now said will fix the lesson still more strongly on your
mind. What would become of you if you were to see a person die in your
presence in consequence of some foolish joke, however apparently
innocent?

Not to conclude with so painful a picture, I will, before we part,
give you the right names of the _curtain_, the _lobby_ or _closet_, and
the _tubes_ of which we have been speaking.

The curtain is called the _Soft Palate_.

The lobby, the _Pharynx_.

The tube which leads to the stomach, the _Aesophagus_.

The tube leading to the lungs, the _Larynx_.

The opening of this tube is the _Glottis_, and the little trap-door
which closes it when one swallows, is the _Epiglottis_.

You must excuse my attempting to explain the meanings of all these
names; it would take me too long to do so. After all, the mere names
are nothing. If I have succeeded in making you understand how all the
different parts act, you may call them what you like.

Here we will rest. We are now on our way to where we shall see the
large apartments, and be introduced to the master, that head of the
house, whom no one can approach without so many ceremonies.



LETTER VIII.

THE STOMACH.

Once in the _oesophagus_ (you remember this is the name of the tube
which leads to the stomach), the mouthful of food has nothing to do but
to proceed on its way. All along this tube there is a succession
of small elastic rings, [Footnote: Properly, _contractile circular
fibres_.] which contract behind the food to force it forward, and
widen before it to give it free passage. They thus propel it forward,
one after another, till it reaches the entrance to the stomach, into
which the last ring pushes it, closing upon it at the same time.

Have you ever observed a worm or a leech in motion? You see a successive
swelling up of the whole surface of its body, as the creature gradually
pushes forward, just as if there was something in its inside rolling
along from the tail to the head. Such is precisely the appearance which
the _oesophagus_ would present to you, as the food passes down it, if
you had the opportunity of seeing it in action; and this has been called
_the vermicular movement_, in consequence of its resemblance to the
movement of a worm.

Here I wish to draw your attention to the very important fact, that
this movement is in one respect of a quite different nature from that
of your thumb when you take hold of a bit of bread, or that of your
jaw when you bite with your teeth, or of your tongue, &c., when you
swallow. All these actions belong to yourself, to a certain extent;
they are voluntary, and under your own guidance; that is, you may
perform them or not, as you choose. There is a constant connexion
between you and them, and you knew what I meant at once as I named
each of them in succession. But in speaking of this other movement we
enter upon another world, of which you know nothing. Here is the black
hole of which I spoke. The little rings of the _oesophagus_ perform
their work by themselves, and you have no power in the matter. Not
only do they move independently of you, but were you to take it into
your head to stop them, it would be about as wise a proceeding as if
you were to talk to them. We will speak hereafter, in another place,
of these impertinent servants, who do not recognise your authority,
and with whom we shall have constantly to do, throughout what remains
to be said on the subject of eating. The truth is, your body is like
a little kingdom, of which you have to be the queen, but queen of the
frontiers only. The arms, the legs, the lips, the eyelids, all the
exterior parts, are your very humble servants; at your slightest bidding
they move or keep still: your will is their law. But in the interior
you are quite unknown. There, there is a little republic to itself,
ruling itself independently of your orders, which it would laugh at,
if you attempted to issue them.

This republic, to make use of another metaphor, is the kitchen of the
body. It is there they make blood, as they know how; putting it to all
sorts of uses for your advantage, it is true, but without your consent.
You are in the position of the lady of a house whose servants have
shut the door of the kitchen in her face that they may carry on their
business after their own fashion, leaving only the housemaid and
coachman at her command. It may be humiliating, perhaps, to be thus
only partially mistress at home; but what can you do, my little
demi-queen? I will tell you: make up your mind to govern the subjects
under your orders as wisely as possible; and, as to the rest, be content
with the only resource left you: viz., that of looking in at the window
of the kitchen to see what goes on there!

The stomach is the head cook: the president of the internal republic.
He has charge of the stoves; the whole weight of affairs is on his
hands, and he provides for the interests of all. Aesop taught us this,
long ago, in his fable of "The Belly and Members." [Footnote: La
Fontaine's translation is quoted in the French original, where the
name of the fable is "_Messer Gaster_," a more correct title than our
own. _Gaster_ is a Greek word signifying stomach; and it is strictly
_the stomach_ which is _meant_ in the fable. From this comes, too, the
medical term _gastritis_, the name of a disease of the stomach.--TR.] It
is a very good fable, and was wisely appealed to once by a Roman Consul
to appease a disturbance in the State. But the application was not quite
fair in one respect; and since I have started the subject, I will
satisfy myself by explaining to you where it was wrong. The time will
not be wasted, for this fable has furnished information to a great many
people about the economy of their insides, and possibly to you; and I
should like you to know the exact truth of all the particulars alluded
to. Whether Aesop understood them all, I cannot pretend to say; but the
application by the old Roman to the quarrel between the big-wig senators
and the people was on one point decidedly unjust; for there was, as far
as facts are concerned, something to be said on behalf of the stomach,
which Consul Menenius seems not to have thought of.

When you come to this part of the Roman history you will learn that
the Roman Senate was a large and fat stomach, which did, it is true,
furnish good nourishment to the other members of the State, but kept
the best share for itself. We may say this now without risk of offence,
it having been dead for so long a time. Our stomach is the leanest,
slightest, frailest part of our body. It is master in the sense in
which it is said in the Gospel, "Let him that is first among you be
the servant of the others." It receives everything, but it gives
everything back, and keeps nothing, or almost nothing, for itself.
Between ourselves, Consul Menenius, the advocate of the Senate, had
no business to talk to the poor wretches at Rome of any comparison
between their government and so careful an administrator of the public
good as a human stomach. He should have taken his subject of comparison
from the families of geese or ducks--animals which have no teeth. These
have strong, well-grown stomachs--true Roman senators--whose stoutness
is in proportion to the work given them to do. But man provides his
with work already prepared by chewing, supposing him to have had the
sense to chew it, of course. It was not from a comparison with man,
therefore, that Menenius ought to have got his boasted apologue, which
was but a poor jest on the subject.

You did not expect, my dear, to come in for a lesson on Roman History
in a discussion on the stomach. But the study of nature is connected
with everything else, though without appearing to be so, and I was not
sorry to give you, incidentally, this proof of the unexpected light
which it throws, as we go along, upon a thousand questions which appear
perfectly foreign to it. Look, for example, at this old fable cited
by Menenius. For the two thousand years and upwards that it has been
in circulation, troops of historians, poets, orators, and writers of
all kinds, have passed it forward from one to the other, without having
troubled themselves to investigate the laws of nature in connection
with the stomach; therefore, not one, that I am aware of, has observed
this small error, so trifling in appearance, so important in reality,
which nevertheless is obvious to the first young naturalist who thinks
the matter over.

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