William Henry Drummond - "The Voyageur and Other Poems"

Matilda Betham - "Poems"

George Mueller - "A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller"

Unknown - "The Junior Classics, 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 History of a Mouthful of Bread

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




But enough of the Romans. Let us return to our master--the head cook,
if you choose to call him so.

I was telling you just now that he managed the stoves, and you may
have thought that I was merely using similes, as I am apt to do. But
not so: it is quite true that he cooks; and so now tell me, if you
can, whence he gets his fire to cook with, or rather, to speak more
correctly, who gives it to him?

Now you are quite puzzled, so I must help you out.

In the mansion we were talking about some time ago, to whom would anyone
who wanted to light a fire, apply for wood?

I think you can answer this yourself, for you cannot have forgotten
our famous steward, who gives everything to everybody. But, you will
wonder, I dare say, how the blood can carry wood in his pockets.
Wood? Ay, and real wood too, as we shall soon see: but it is not wood
we are talking about now. The blood has something more to the purpose
than wood in his pockets, for he has heat ready made. So when the
stomach wishes to set to work, it appeals to the blood, which comes
running from all parts of the body, and heats it so effectually that
everything within is really and actually cooked. This is why one feels
a sort of slight shudder down the back when the stomach has a great
deal to do at once, for the blood being called for in a hurry, comes
rushing along in great gushes, and carries with it the heat from the
other parts of the body.

It is for this reason, too, that it is so dangerous to bathe when the
stomach is at work cooking, because the cold of the water drives
suddenly back all the blood which has accumulated around the little
saucepan, and this causes such a shock in the body that people often
die of it.

Do not ask me, to-day, where this heat of the blood comes from; we
will speak of that hereafter. But I may tell you at once that our dear
steward is not a bit cleverer in this matter than other people, and
obtains his heat, like the humblest mortal, by burning his wood. Do
not puzzle yourself to find out how. Enough that he burns it as we do,
and by a similar process.

Well, in one way or another, the master cook has his fire at command.
You know also, already, what it is he has to get cooked; namely, the
pulpy stew, which has begun in the mouth by chewing, and which it is
his business now to finish perfectly. Now see what a cook does who has
got her stew over the fire. She turns and turns it again and again,
and shakes the saucepan from time to time, that the ingredients may
be more thoroughly mixed up together; and this is precisely what is
done by the stomach; for all the time that the cooking is going on,
he swells and contracts himself alternately, after the fashion of those
rings of the _oesophagus_ we were talking about, tossing and tumbling
the food from one side to another, so as to knead it, as it were.

Again, the cook adds water to her stew from time to time to keep it
moist; and so the stomach pours constantly upon his stew a liquid,
which contains a great deal of water, and which flows in from a quantity
of little holes, sunk in his delicate coats.

What more?

The cook puts in a little salt: and this the stomach takes care not
to forget either, for he is a cook who understands his business. In
the liquid of which I am speaking, there is, if not exactly salt as
one sees it at table, at all events the most active part of salt, that
which possesses in the highest degree the property of reducing
everything we eat to a paste; and this is the real reason why we find
all food so insipid which has not been seasoned with salt. As salt
contains a principle essential to the work to be done by the stomach,
some method had to be devised to induce us to provide him with it, and
this method the porter up above has hit upon. He makes a face if we
offer him anything without a little salt on it, as much as to say--"How
can you expect them to cook you properly down below, my good friend,
if you don't bring them proper materials?"

Upon which hint men have always acted from the beginning; and as far
as we can trace history back, we find them mixing salt with their food,
though without knowing the real reason why. It is the same, too, with
the lower animals. They know nothing of the matter either, but this
does not prevent their having a natural relish for salt, as any one
will tell you who has the charge of cattle; for their stomachs require
for their cooking the very same seasoning as our own, and therefore
their porter above has received the same orders.

Salt is not the only thing, however, that exists in that liquid in the
stomach. Learned men, after making minute researches, have found in
it another equally powerful material, which is also found in milk.
Therefore cheese, which contains this material as well as salt, is
quite in its place at the end of dinner. It furnishes reinforcements
for the stomach in cooking, and this is why you so often hear people
say that a little cheese helps the digestion.

The _digestion_! Yes, that is the word I ought to have begun with.
It is the real name of all this cooking; an operation after which I
would defy you to recognise the nice little cakes you have eaten, any
better than your mamma can trace her pretty rosy-cheeked apples in the
jelly which she left on the fire two hours ago. The stomach, as you
see, is very busy quite as long a time as that, and if we have to be
very careful (as I pointed out before) not to disturb him too suddenly
in his work after dinner, it is also important that we should not,
while at dinner, give him more work to do than he is capable of doing.
Although he is the master, he is but a puny fellow, as I have already
pointed out; nevertheless, he works conscientiously, because he knows
that the life of the whole body depends upon his exertions. Some people
even say that in spite of his leanness he strips himself, at each
digestion, of his interior skin, which he sacrifices to his work, and
the fragments of which tend to increase and improve the stew which is
entrusted to his care. Think of this, my dear, whenever a greedy fit
comes over you, and recollect that such a disinterested public
functionary deserves some consideration. Besides, there is serious
danger, quite apart from any question of injustice, in overwhelming
him with work. If your legs are wearied out, you have it in your power
to lie in bed. If your arm is in pain, you can keep it at rest. But
your stomach is like those poor people who have to support their
families by the labor of each day. He, too, labors for others: he has
no right to rest, no right to be ill, therefore; and when he begins
to fail, woe betide you--you will have enough of it.

Children who have learnt nothing may laugh at all this, but you, my
dear, are beginning to know something, and "science constrains,"
_i.e._ it has its claims and requirements. It requires you, to-day, not
to be greedy, to-morrow, something else, and so on, continually, until
you have become quite reasonable and wise. I am sorry for you if this
vexes you, but it was your own wish to learn, and _science constrains_.
Indeed, I will whisper to you in confidence that this is the best excuse
people who are unwilling to learn have to offer for refusing. They do
not know what learning may lead to, and what a pity it would be if they
could no longer be greedy, or ill-natured, or selfish. What would become
of us all in such a case?



LETTER IX.

THE STOMACH--_(continued)_.

We made a very long story of the stomach last time, my dear child;
and, after all, I see that there was one thing I forgot to tell
you--viz., what it is like.

Have you ever seen a bagpiper, I wonder? A man who carries under his
arm a kind of large dark brown bag, which he fills with air by blowing
into it, and out of which he presently forces the same air into a
musical pipe by pressing it gently with his elbow. If you never saw
such a thing, it is a pity; first, because the bagpipe was the national
instrument of our ancestors the Gauls, and is religiously preserved
as such by the Scotch Highlanders and the peasants of Brittany--(two
remnants of that illustrious race, whose history I recommend to your
careful perusal some day); secondly, and it is this fact which has the
greatest interest for us just now, because that large bag, which is
the principal part of the instrument, gives you a very exact idea of
your stomach; for in fact it really and truly _is_ a stomach itself, and
moreover, the stomach of an animal whose interior formation resembles
yours very, very much.

And who do you suppose is this audacious animal, which presumes to
have an inside so like that of a pretty little girl? Really, I am half
ashamed to name him, for fear you should be angry with me for doing
so. It is--it is the pig! The resemblance is not exactly a flattering
one to you, perhaps, but we are all alike, and it would be worse than
foolish to grumble at being created as we are. Moreover, there is one
difference; the pig, who thinks of nothing but eating, has a very much
larger stomach than we have, which is some consolation, at any rate.

Place the palm of your right hand on what is called the pit of the
stomach, turning the ends of the fingers towards the heart; your hand
will nearly cover the space usually occupied by the stomach, and you
may figure it to yourself as a rounded and elongated bag, bigger above
than below, making a very decided bend inside as it descends from the
heart downward; something like one of those long French pears, called
"Bon-chretiens," if it were bent in the middle, and the big end of it
were placed next the heart. As for the exact size of the bag, there
is no telling it, for it depends upon circumstances. It is a very
convenient bag in that respect; just such a one as you would like to
have in your frock for a pocket; only there would be a danger of your
being tempted to put too many things into it. For as you fill it, it
expands, and enlarges itself like an indian-rubber ball, which, though
only the size of an egg to begin with, becomes as big as your head if
you blow hard into it. Then, as it gets empty, it recovers itself,
diminishing gradually in size in plait-like contractions.

When people remain too long without eating, they have, as they say,
twinges in the stomach. This is because the stomach, becoming by degrees
quite empty, and contracting more and more, the surrounding parts which
were sustained by it, lose their support, and strain at their ligaments,
which now have all the weight to bear. Careless people, who do not
think of such things, are reminded by the twinging pains that it is
time to eat, just as a careless servant is called to order by the bell
of which his master has pulled the string.

In your case, my dear child, such warnings are soon attended to, and
you have not always even to wait till they come. But there are hundreds
of miserable beings who are warned to no purpose, who cannot obey the
master when he calls for his rations, because they have nothing to
give him; and when this forced disobedience lasts too long, they end
by dying of it. In cases like these, when human beings thus cruelly
perish, the stomach is found to be contracted till it is scarcely
bigger than one's finger.

On the other hand, a man once died suffocated from excess of food,
after one of those great public dinners, which last four, six, or more
hours--one can scarcely say correctly how long--and the doctors who
examined him found his stomach so prodigiously enlarged that it alone
occupied more than one-half of his inside. As you perceive, therefore,
the stomach has, properly speaking, no fixed size. Its size depends
upon what there is in it. It is like those men whose manners go up and
down with their fortunes; who seem very grand people when their pockets
are well filled, but become very small ones when their purses are
empty. There is, nevertheless, this difference between them, that such
men are fools, because they are men, and not _bags_; whereas the
stomach is a sensible bag, fulfilling with intelligence the duties of
its character as a bag. It is very fortunate for us that it is ready
to change its size, according to the caprices of our appetite; and
dressmakers would do well if they could get a hint from it how to
improve their style of pockets, which certainly cannot have cost their
inventors any very great effort of imagination!

The way in which this extraordinary pocket empties itself is not less
curious than the rest. As long as digestion is going on, the stomach
is firmly closed at each end; at the upper one by the last ring of the
_aesophagus_, and at the lower by another ring of the same kind,
only stronger; the watchful guardian of the passage which leads to the
intestines. This ring is called the _pylorus_.

For once, here is a name which agrees with our method of describing
the human machine, and I have much pleasure in translating it to you,
although it is a Greek word. _Pylorus_ is the Greek for a porter;
and our ring is indeed a porter like the one of which we have already
said so much, and which I called last time the _porter up above_,
in anticipation of his colleague below.

The porter up above presides at the entrance; the one below at the
exit, and both for the same purpose, namely, to _taste._ [Footnote:
It would be absurd to say so in the common acceptation of the term;
but according to No. 1 of Mr. Mayo's "Classification of the impressions
produced by substances taken into the fauces," viz., _"Where
sensations of_ touch _alone are produced, as by rock-crystal,
sapphire, or ice,"_ the word taste may be applied to the
discriminating faculty of the _Pylorus_.--TR.]

It may well astonish you, that you should have in your inside a taster
who is not accountable to you; who experiences sensations of which you
know nothing, and cannot even form an idea. Yet thus it is. The
_pylorus_ actually tastes the paste which is in the stomach, and
if it is not to his taste, that is to say, if the work of digestion
has not sufficiently transformed it for use, he keeps the door
relentlessly closed.

The porter up above has a thousand different tastes. He makes his bow
to meringues, and admits wings of chickens. Fries, roasts, stews,
things tender or crisp, sweet and salt, oily, greasy, or sour; amongall
kinds he has friends whom he welcomes in succession; and it is
well for us that he does so, for we share in all his pleasures.

The porter below, who works for himself alone, obscure and unknown
down in his black hole, the porter below, I say, has but one taste,
knows but one friend--a gray-looking paste, semi-liquid, with a very
peculiar unsavoury smell, disagreeable enough to any one but himself,
which is called the _chyme_, I scarcely know why, but it is what
everything one eats turns into, without exception, be it delicate or
coarse by nature. The great lord's truffle-stuffed pullet makes, as
nearly as possible, the same _chyme_ as the charcoal-burner's black
bread; and though the palate of the former may be better treated
than that of the latter, the _pylori_ can enjoy but one and the
selfsame sauce. Equality is soon restored in this case, therefore, as
you see.

To be free to pass through then, the contents of the stomach must be
reduced to the condition of _chyme,_ the only substance which finds
favor with the _pylorus:_ and as, in the endless varieties of food which
go to form our nutriment, some sorts turn into _chyme_ much more quickly
than others, it follows, that by the aid of its discriminating tact
(which is not easy to elude) the _pylorus_ allows some to pass, while it
turns back others, until all in succession are converted into chyme. For
example, in the case of a mouthful of bread and meat swallowed at once,
the bread passes away on its travels long before the meat has done
dancing attendance in the stomach, awaiting that transformation without
which the _pylorus_ will never allow it to slip through.

This ought to make you seriously reflect on the danger of carelessly
swallowing things, which, by their nature, are not susceptible of being
converted into _chyme,_ particularly if they are too large to
hide in the general paste, as a cherry-stone will sometimes do, so
mixed up with other food as to pass unperceived by the _pylorus,_
over whose decisions we have no control, remember. It bangs the door
to, be assured, in the very face of anything obnoxious without
hesitation, and the poor stomach would find itself condemned to retain
them for an indefinite period, unless by dint of prayers and
supplications they should contrive to soften the stern guardian, who
may at last get accustomed to their approach, and, perhaps, in a weak
moment, allow them to pass as contraband goods; like a custom-house
officer on a foreign frontier who will occasionally shut his eyes to
a country friend's packet of tobacco. But the poor stomach has had to
suffer a martyrdom meantime, while the dispute was pending, and before
the intruder has been winked at by the porter.

I shall remember all my life the history of a peach-stone, which was
related to me in 1831. I was at the time a youngster at the Stanislaus
College, and (aided perhaps by the Revolution of July, which had
recently occurred), it was just then discovered to be a proper thing
to set about teaching the laws of nature to children. Consequently,
for the first time in the history of schools, a professor of natural
history was added to the instructors of Latin and Greek. I leave you
to judge how we opened our ears to his lessons. When we arrived in the
course of our new studies at the _pylorus,_ of which we had none
of us ever heard before, our professor, in warning us, as I have done
you, of the dangers of imprudent gluttony, related, as an instance,
the case of a lady who had inadvertently swallowed a peach-stone. For
two years she suffered agonies in her stomach without any cessation
or relief. The luckless peach-stone, repelled by the walls of the
stomach, which its very touch irritated, was incessantly thrown against
the entrance of the _pylorus,_ but in vain. As to turning itself
into _chyme,_ such a thing was not to be thought of, it was far
too hard a substance for that. Round and round it went, causing in its
relentless course such renewed suffering to the poor patient, that she
was visibly sinking from day to day.

The doctors, finding all their treatment of no avail, began to despair
of her life, when one fine day she was suddenly, and as if by
enchantment, relieved of her tormentor. The peach-stone had bribed the
porter, with whom, in the course of the two years, it had scraped up
a sort of friendship. It had cleared the terrible barrier, had been
allowed to slip out, and the lady was saved; but it was only just in
time.

I do not know, my dear, that this story, which is certainly well
calculated to cure you of any fancy for swallowing peach-stones,
willmake as much impression on you as it did on me five-and-twenty years
ago. The idea of telling it to you occurred to me quite by chance. It
has carried me back to the time when, as is now the case with you, the
mysteries which lie hidden in our internal organization were beginning
to be revealed to my mind; and you will one day know with what delight
one recalls the remembrance of these first dawnings of the intellectual
life--that delightful infancy of the growing mind--more rich in
recollections, and more interesting a thousand fold than the infancy
of the body. I have allowed myself the little treat of this episode,
and if I have had the good fortune to amuse you at all during our
progress, you must not cavil at this piece of self-indulgence.
And now we have done just what the peach-stone did; we, too, have
passed the barrier, and are out of the stomach, but still we have not
yet come to the end of our tale.



LETTER X.

THE INTESTINAL CANAL.

I venture to hope, my dear child, that more and more light is dawning
upon your mind, as we gradually proceed on our little journey. You
must by this time have some idea how the food, which has been masticated
and softened in the mouth, cooked, kneaded, and decomposed in the
stomach, and transformed into a soft, semi-transparent kind of paste,
will soon be ready to mix with the blood, in order to repair the waste
that the life-stream is continually undergoing in its ceaseless course
through all parts of the body.

You have perhaps thought it a sad degradation for a truffle-stuffed
fowl to turn to _chyme._ But when you consider that by this means
it becomes part and parcel of a human body, the change is not to be
despised. It was necessary, to begin with, that materials destined to
the honor of being incorporated into our frame, should break the links
which bound them to the condition of fowl and vegetable, and thus be
free to engage in new relations; just as a man who wishes to be
naturalized in a new country must first break the ties which hold him
to the old one. Those articles of food we were speaking of lately,
which are so stiff and ceremonious, and want so much coaxing before
they change into _chyme,_ which, moreover, we call _indigestible_
because they tire the stomach so much more than the rest, are merely
those whose component parts being held together by more solid ties than
usual, continue obstinately in the same state as at first, and will not
consent to that dissolution which is the first condition of their
glorious transformation.

Moreover, the transformation which has been described to you now, you
will henceforth meet with everywhere; wherever, that is to say, and
as far as, you choose to pursue the study of nature. God works by one
grand and simple rule so far as we can discover. He destroys to
reconstruct, builds up what is to be, out of the ruins of what has
been, creates life by death, if I may so express myself, and thus,
what takes place in our stomachs on a small scale goes on on a large
one in the universe.

Social communities, like everything else, are subject to this universal
law, and it is not always an advantage to them when they refuse to be
digested in the great stomach of the age!

While we are on this subject, and to show you how wonderfully this
little history of eating, told in this familiar style, applies right
and left, let us reflect on the causes which have produced a great and
mighty nation in one country (as in France), while in another (as in.
Germany), a far more numerous and even more intellectual population
has failed to rise to anything like the same distinction. The
explanation is not difficult. In the one case, the petty tribes among
which the land was originally divided consented to mix, and dissolve,
and be digested as it were together, in order to revive again for a
more glorious career; while in the other, the aboriginal societies
have adhered stiffly to their distinctive characters, and failing to
submit to the regenerating process, cling together in indigested
portions, rather than assimilate into one great whole.

However, we must return to the _pylorus_ or we shall be getting
into a difficulty! What I am now going to offer you though, is rather
hard of digestion, but it will not do to provide sweet pastry only for
your brain; it will be more wholesome for it to have something a little
more solid to bite at from time to time.

The _pylorus_, then, as has been shown, makes way for all sorts
of aliments when they have been converted into _chyme; i.e._,
when they have lost their original form and individuality. They are
dead to their first life, therefore; now the question is, how are they
to be revived into the new one?

Behind the _pylorus_ extends a long conduit or tube--so long as to be
sometimes seven times the length of the whole body, but doubled up
backwards and forwards a number of times, so as to form a large bundle,
which fills the whole cavity of the belly--or as we also call it, the
_abdomen_. This bundle or packet is known to everybody as _the
intestines_, and it is divided into two portions: the _small
intestine_--that is, the slenderer, finer portion which begins at the
_pylorus_, and forms all the doublings of the packet, and the _large
intestine_, which is shorter and thicker also, as its name implies, and
keeps to some extent separate, though it is in reality only a
continuation of the other. This starts at the base of the _abdomen_,
near the right side, goes up in a straight line to the height of the
stomach, below which it passes, making a large bend in front of the
small intestine; after which it descends on the left side to the lower
part of the trunk, where it terminates.

You will perhaps inquire how the _chyme_ continues to make its way
through all these manifold twists of the intestines; but do not trouble
yourself; it has only to let itself go. That _vermicular movement_ which
we noticed in the _oesophagus_ and in the _stomach_ is found here also.
It reigns, so to speak, from one end of our internal eating-machine to
the other; which eating-machine, by the way, we will now call by its
proper scientific name--_the intestinal canal_; and it is by that
movement the food is carried forward from the first moment it leaves the
mouth, and helped through all its journeyings, till it reaches the
termination of the large intestine.

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