Various - "Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860"

George Washington Cable - "The Cavalier"

Dan Smoot - "The Invisible Government"

Richard F. Burton - "Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2"

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.

Annie Kilburn

W >> W. D. Howells >> Annie Kilburn




"Yes," said the minister, coming to her relief, "I once worked in a
cotton-mill. Then," he continued, dismissing the personal concern, "it
seems to me that I saw things in their right light, as I have never been
able to see them since--"

"And how brutal," she broke in, "how cruel and vulgar, what I said must
have seemed to you!"

"I fancied," he continued evasively, "that I had authority to set myself
apart from my fellow-workmen, to be a teacher and guide to the true life.
But it was a great error. The true life was the life of work, and no one
ever had authority to turn from it. Christ Himself came as a labouring
man."

"That is true," said Annie; and his words transfigured the man who spoke
them, so that her heart turned reverently toward him. "But if you had been
meant to work in a mill all your life," she pursued, "would you have been
given the powers you have, and that you have just used to save me from
despair?"

The minister rose, and said, with a sigh: "No one was meant to work in a
mill all his life. Good night."

She would have liked to keep him longer, but she could not think how,
at once. As he turned to go out through the Boltons' part of the house,
"Won't you go out through my door?" she asked, with a helpless effort at
hospitality.

"Oh, if you wish," he answered submissively.

When she had closed the door upon him she went to speak with Mrs. Bolton.
She was in the kitchen mixing flour to make bread, and Annie traced
her by following the lamp-light through the open door. It discovered
Bolton sitting in the outer doorway, his back against one jamb and his
stocking-feet resting against the base of the other.

"Mrs. Bolton," Annie began at once, making herself free of one of the hard
kitchen chairs, "how is Mr. Peck getting on in Hatboro'?"

"I d'know as I know just what you mean, Miss Kilburn," said Mrs. Bolton, on
the defensive.

"I mean, is there a party against him in his church? Is he unpopular?"

Mrs. Bolton took some flour and sprinkled it on her bread-board; then she
lifted the mass of dough out of the trough before her, and let it sink
softly upon the board.

"I d'know as you can say he's unpoplah. He ain't poplah with some. Yes,
there's a party--the Gerrish party."

"Is it a strong one?"

"It's pretty strong."

"Do you think it will prevail?"

"Well, most o' folks don't know _what_ they want; and if there's some
folks that know what they _don't_ want, they can generally keep from
havin' it."

Bolton made a soft husky prefatory noise of protest in his throat, which
seemed to stimulate his wife to a more definite assertion, and she cut in
before he could speak--

"_I_ should say that unless them that stood Mr. Peck's friends first
off, and got him here, done something to keep him, his enemies wa'n't goin'
to take up his cause."

Annie divined a personal reproach for Bolton in the apparent abstraction.

"Oh, now, you'll see it'll all come out right in the end, Pauliny," he
mildly opposed. "There ain't any such great feelin' about Mr. Peck; nothin'
but what'll work itself off perfec'ly natural, give it time. It's goin' to
come out all right."

"Yes, at the day o' jedgment," Mrs. Bolton assented, plunging her fists
into the dough, and beginning to work a contempt for her husband's optimism
into it.

"Yes, an' a good deal before," he returned. "There's always somethin' to
objec' to every minister; we ain't any of us perfect, and Mr. Peck's got
his failin's; he hain't built up the church quite so much as some on 'em
expected but what he would; and there's some that don't like his prayers;
and some of 'em thinks he ain't doctrinal enough. But I guess, take it all
round, he suits pretty well. It'll come out all right, Pauliny. You'll
see."

A pause ensued, of which Annie felt the awfulness. It seemed to her that
Mrs. Bolton's impatience with this intolerable hopefulness must burst
violently. She hastened to interpose. "I think the trouble is that people
don't fully understand Mr. Peck at first. But they do finally."

"Yes; take time," said Bolton.

"Take eternity, I guess, for some," retorted his wife. "If you think
William B. Gerrish is goin' to work round with time--" She stopped for want
of some sufficiently rejectional phrase, and did not go on.

"The way I look at it," said Bolton, with incorrigible courage, "is like
this: When it comes to anything like askin' Mr. Peck to resign, it'll
develop his strength. You can't tell how strong he is without you try to
git red of him. I 'most wish it would come, once, fair and square."

"I'm sure you're right, Mr. Bolton," said Annie. "I don't believe that your
church would let such a man go when it really came to it. Don't they all
feel that he has great ability?"

"Oh, I guess they appreciate him as far forth as ability goes. Some on 'em
complains that he's a little _too_ intellectial, if anything. But I
tell 'em it's a good fault; it's a thing that can be got over in time."

Mrs. Bolton had ceased to take part in the discussion. She finished
kneading her dough, and having fitted it into two baking-pans and dusted it
with flour, she laid a clean towel over both. But when Annie rose she took
the lamp from the mantel-shelf, where it stood, and held it up for her to
find her way back to her own door.

Annie went to bed with a spirit lightened as well as chastened, and
kept saying over the words of Mr. Peck, so as to keep fast hold of the
consolation they had given her. They humbled her with, a sense of his
wisdom and insight; the thought of them kept her awake. She remembered the
tonic that Dr. Morrell had left with her, and after questioning whether she
really needed it now, she made sure by getting up and taking it.




XV.


The spring had filled and flushed into summer. Bolton had gone over the
grass on the slope before the house, and it was growing thick again, dark
green above the yellow of its stubble, and the young generation of robins
was foraging in it for the callow grasshoppers. Some boughs of the maples
were beginning to lose the elastic upward lift of their prime, and to hang
looser and limper with the burden of their foliage. The elms drooped lower
toward the grass, and swept the straggling tops left standing in their
shade.

The early part of September had been fixed for the theatricals. Annie
refused to have anything to do with them, and the preparations remained
altogether with Brandreth. "The minuet," he said to her one afternoon, when
he had come to report to her as a co-ordinate authority, "is going to be
something exquisite, I assure you. A good many of the ladies studied it in
the Continental times, you know, when we had all those Martha Washington
parties--or, I forgot you were out of the country--and it will be done
perfectly. We're going to have the ball-room scene on the tennis-court just
in front of the evergreens, don't you know, and then the balcony scene
in the same place. We have to cut some of the business between Romeo
and Juliet, because it's too long, you know, and some of it's too--too
passionate; we couldn't do it properly, and we've decided to leave it out.
But we sketch along through the play, and we have Friar Laurence coming
with Juliet out of his cell onto the tennis-court and meeting Romeo; so
that tells the story of the marriage. You can't imagine what a Mercutio Mr.
Putney makes; he throws himself into it heart and soul, especially where
he fights with Tybalt and gets killed. I give him lines there out of other
scenes too; the tennis-court sets that part admirably; they come out of a
street at the side. I think the scenery will surprise you, Miss Kilburn.
Well, and then we have the Nurse and Juliet, and the poison scene--we put
it into the garden, on the tennis-court, and we condense the different acts
so as to give an idea of all that's happened, with Romeo banished, and all
that. Then he comes back from Mantua, and we have the tomb scene set at
one side of the tennis-court just opposite the street scene; and he fights
with Paris; and then we have Juliet come to the door of the tomb--it's a
liberty, of course; but we couldn't arrange the light inside--and she stabs
herself and falls on Romeo's body, and that ends the play. You see, it
gives a notion of the whole action, and tells the story pretty well. I
think you'll be pleased."

"I've no doubt I shall," said Annie. "Did you make the adaptation yourself,
Mr. Brandreth?"

"Well, yes, I did," Mr. Brandreth modestly admitted. "It's been a good deal
of work, but it's been a pleasure too. You know how that is, Miss Kilburn,
in your charities."

"_Don't_ speak of my charities, Mr. Brandreth. I'm not a charitable
person."

"You won't get people to believe _that_" said Mr. Brandreth.
"Everybody knows how much good you do. But, as I was saying, my idea was to
give a notion of the whole play in a series of passages or tableaux. Some
of my friends think I've succeeded so well in telling the story, don't you
know, without a change of scene, that they're urging me to publish my
arrangement for the use of out-of-door theatricals."

"I should think it would be a very good idea," said Annie. "I suppose Mr.
Chapley would do it?"

"Well, I don't know--I don't know," Mr. Brandreth answered, with a note of
trouble in his voice. "I'm afraid not," he added sadly. "Miss Kilburn, I've
been put in a very unfair position by Miss Northwick's changing her mind
about Juliet, after the part had been offered to Miss Chapley. I've been
made the means of a seeming slight to Miss Chapley, when, if it hadn't been
for the cause, I'd rather have thrown up the whole affair. She gave up the
part instantly when she heard that Miss Northwick wished to change her
mind, but all the same I know--."

He stopped, and Annie said encouragingly: "Yes, I see. But perhaps she
doesn't really care."

"That's what she said," returned Mr. Brandreth ruefully. "But I don't know.
I have never spoken of it with her since I went to tell her about it, after
I got Miss Northwick's note."

"Well, Mr. Brandreth, I think you've really been victimised; and I don't
believe the Social Union will ever be worth what it's costing."

"I was sure you would appreciate--would understand;" and Mr. Brandreth
pressed her hand gratefully in leave-taking.

She heard him talking with some one at the gate, whose sharp, "All right,
my son!" identified Putney.

She ran to the door to welcome him.

"Oh, you're _both_ here!" she rejoiced, at sight of Mrs. Putney too.

"I can send Ellen home," suggested Putney.

"Oh _no_, indeed!" said Annie, with single-mindedness at which she
laughed with Mrs. Putney. "Only it seemed too good to have you both," she
explained, kissing Mrs. Putney. "I'm _so_ glad to see you!"

"Well, what's the reason?" Putney dropped into a chair and began to rock
nervously. "Don't be ashamed: we're _all_ selfish. Has Brandreth been
putting up any more jobs on you?"

"No, no! Only giving me a hint of his troubles and sorrows with those
wretched Social Union theatricals. Poor young fellow! I'm sorry for him. He
is really very sweet and unselfish. I like him."

"Yes, Brandreth is one of the most lady-like fellows I ever saw," said
Putney. "That Juliet business has pretty near been the death of him. I told
him to offer Miss Chapley some other part--Rosaline, the part of the young
lady who was dropped; but he couldn't seem to see it. Well, and how come on
the good works, Annie?"

"The good works! Ralph, tell me: _do_ people think me a charitable
person? Do they suppose I've done or can do any good whatever?" She looked
from Putney to his wife, and back again with comic entreaty.

"Why, aren't you a charitable person? Don't you do any good?" he asked.

"No!" she shouted. "Not the least in the world!"

"It is pretty rough," said Putney, taking out a cigar for a dry smoke; "and
nobody will believe me when I report what you say, Annie. Mrs. Munger is
telling round that she don't see how you can live through the summer at the
rate you're going. She's got it down pretty cold about your taking Brother
Peck's idea of the invited dance and supper, and joining hands with him to
save the vanity of the self-respecting poor. She says that your suppression
of that one unpopular feature has done more than anything else to promote
the success of the Social Union. You ought to be glad Brother Peck is
coming to the show."

"To the theatricals?"

Putney nodded his head. "That's what he says. I believe Brother Peck is
coming to see how the upper classes amuse themselves when they really try
to benefit the lower classes."

Annie would not laugh at his joke. "Ralph," she asked, "is it true that Mr.
Peck is so unpopular in his church? Is he really going to be turned
out--dismissed?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. But they'll bounce him if they can."

"And can nothing be done? Can't his friends unite?"

"Oh, they're united enough now; what they're afraid of is that they're not
numerous enough. Why don't you buy in, Annie, and help control the stock?
That old Unitarian concern of yours isn't ever going to get into running
order again, and if you owned a pew in Ellen's church you could have a vote
in church meeting, after a while, and you could lend Brother Peck your
moral support now."

"I never liked that sort of thing, Ralph. I shouldn't believe with your
people."

"Ellen's people, please. _I_ don't believe with them either. But I
always vote right. Now you think it over."

"No, I shall not think it over. I don't approve of it. If I should take
a pew in your church it would be simply to hear Mr. Peck preach, and
contribute toward his--"

"Salary? Yes, that's the way to look at it in the beginning. I knew you'd
work round. Why, Annie, in a year's time you'll be trying to _buy_
votes for Brother Peck."

"I should _never_ vote," she retorted. "And I shall keep myself out of
all temptation by not going to your church."

"Ellen's church," Putney corrected.

She went the next Sunday to hear Mr. Peck preach, and Putney, who seemed to
see her the moment she entered the church, rose, as the sexton was showing
her up the aisle, and opened the door of his pew for her with ironical
welcome.

"You can always have a seat with us, Annie," he mocked, on their way out of
the church together.

"Thank you, Ralph," she answered boldly. "I'm going to speak to the sexton
for a pew."




XVI.


A wire had been carried from the village to the scene of the play at South
Hatboro', and electric globes fizzed and hissed overhead, flooding the open
tennis-court with the radiance of sharper moonlight, and stamping the thick
velvety shadows of the shrubbery and tree-tops deep into the raw green of
the grass along its borders.

The spectators were seated on the verandas and terraced turf at the rear of
the house, and they crowded the sides of the court up to a certain point,
where a cord stretched across it kept them from encroaching upon the space
intended for the action. Another rope enclosed an area all round them,
where chairs and benches were placed for those who had tickets. After the
rejection of the exclusive feature of the original plan, Mrs. Munger had
liberalised more and more: she caused it to be known that all who could get
into her grounds would be welcome on the outside of that rope, even though
they did not pay anything; but a large number of tickets had been sold to
the hands, as well as to the other villagers, and the area within the rope
was closely packed. Some of the boys climbed the neighbouring trees, where
from time to time the town authorities threatened them, but did not really
dislodge them.

Annie, with other friends of Mrs. Munger, gained a reserved seat on the
veranda through the drawing-room windows; but once there, she found herself
in the midst of a sufficiently mixed company.

"How do, Miss Kilburn? That you? Well, I declare!" said a voice that she
seemed to know, in a key of nervous excitement. Mrs. Savor's husband
leaned across his wife's lap and shook hands with Annie. "William thought
I better come," Mrs. Savor seemed called upon to explain. "I got to do
_something_. Ain't it just too cute for anything the way they got them
screens worked into the shrubbery down they-ar? It's like the cycloraymy to
Boston; you can't tell where the ground ends and the paintin' commences.
Oh, I do want 'em to _begin_!"

Mr. Savor laughed at his wife's impatience, and she said playfully: "What
you laughin' at? I guess you're full as excited as what I be, when all's
said and done."

There were other acquaintances of Annie's from Over the Track, in the group
about her, and upon the example of the Savors they all greeted her. The
wives and sweethearts tittered with self-derisive expectation; the men were
gravely jocose, like all Americans in unwonted circumstances, but they were
respectful to the coming performance, perhaps as a tribute to Annie. She
wondered how some of them came to have those seats, which were reserved at
an extra price; she did not allow for that self-respect which causes the
American workman to supply himself with the best his money can buy while
his money lasts.

She turned to see who was on her other hand. A row of three small children
stretched from her to Mrs. Gerrish, whom she did not recognise at first.
"Oh, Emmeline!" she said; and then, for want of something else, she added,
"Where is Mr. Gerrish? Isn't he coming?"

"He was detained at the store," said Mrs. Gerrish, with cold importance;
"but he will be here. May I ask, Annie," she pursued solemnly, "how you got
here?"

"How did I get here? Why, through the windows. Didn't you?"

"May I ask who had charge of the arrangements?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," said Annie. "I suppose Mrs. Munger."

A burst of music came from the dense shadow into which the group of
evergreens at the bottom of the tennis-court deepened away from the glister
of the electrics. There was a deeper hush; then a slight jarring and
scraping of a chair beyond Mrs. Gerrish, who leaned across her children and
said, "He's come, Annie--right through the parlour window!" Her voice was
lifted to carry above the music, and all the people near were able to share
the fact that righted Mrs. Gerrish in her own esteem.

From the covert of the low pines in the middle of the scene Miss Northwick
and Mr. Brandreth appeared hand in hand, and then the place filled with
figures from other apertures of the little grove and through the artificial
wings at the sides, and walked the minuet. Mr. Fellows, the painter, had
helped with the costumes, supplying some from his own artistic properties,
and mediavalising others; the Boston costumers had been drawn upon by the
men; and they all moved through the stately figures with a security which
discipline had given them. The broad solid colours which they wore took the
light and shadow with picturesque effectiveness; the masks contributed a
sense of mystery novel in Hatboro', and kept the friends of the dancers
in exciting doubt of their identity; the strangeness of the audience to
all spectacles of the sort held its judgment in suspense. The minuet
was encored, and had to be given again, and it was some time before the
applause of the repetition allowed the characters to be heard when the
partners of the minuet began to move about arm in arm, and the drama
properly began. When the applause died away it was still not easy to hear;
a boy in one of the trees called, "Louder!" and made some of the people
laugh, but for the rest they were very orderly throughout.

Toward the end of the fourth act Annie was startled by a child dashing
itself against her knees, and breaking into a gurgle of shy laughter as
children do.

"Why, you little witch!" she said to the uplifted face of Idella Peck.
"Where is your father?"

"Oh, somewhere," said the child, with entire ease of mind.

"And your hat?" said Annie, putting her hand on the curly bare
head--"where's your hat?"

"On the ground."

"On the ground--where?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Idella lightly, as if the pursuit bored her.

Annie pulled her up on her lap. "Well, now, you stay here with me, if you
please, till your papa or your hat comes after you."

"My--hat--can't--come--after--me!" said the child, turning back her head,
so as to laugh her sense of the joke in Annie's face.

"No matter; your papa can, and I'm going to keep you."

Idella let her head fall back against Annie's breast, and began to finger
the rings on the hand which Annie laid across her lap to keep her.

"For goodness gracious!" said Mrs. Savor, "who you got there, Miss
Kilburn?"

"Mr. Peck's little girl."

"Where'd she spring from?"

Mrs. Gerrish leaned forward and spoke across the six legs of her children,
who were all three standing up in their chairs: "You don't mean to say
that's Idella Peck? Where's her father?"

"Somewhere, she says," said Annie, willing to answer Mrs. Gerrish with the
child's nonchalance.

"Well, that's great!" said Mrs. Gerrish. "I should think he better be
looking after her--or some one."

The music ceased, and the last act of the play began. Before it ended,
Idella had fallen asleep, and Annie sat still with her after the crowd
around her began to break up. Mrs. Savor kept her seat beside Annie. She
said, "Don't you want I should spell you a little while, Miss Kilburn?" She
leaned over the face of the sleeping child. "Why, she ain't much more than
a baby! William, you go and see if you can't find Mr. Peck. I'm goin' to
stay here with Miss Kilburn." Her husband humoured her whim, and made his
way through the knots and clumps of people toward the rope enclosing the
tennis-court. "Won't you let me hold her, Miss Kilburn?" she pleaded again.

"No, no; she isn't heavy; I like to hold her," replied Annie. Then
something occurred to her, and she started in amazement at herself.

"Or yes, Mrs. Savor, you _may_ take her a while;" and she put the
child into the arms of the bereaved creature, who had fallen desolately
back in her chair. She hugged Idella up to her breast, and hungrily mumbled
her with kisses, and moaned out over her, "Oh dear! Oh my! Oh my!"




XVII.


The people beyond the rope had nearly all gone away, and Mr. Savor was
coming back across the court with Mr. Peck. The players appeared from the
grove at the other end of the court in their vivid costumes, chatting and
laughing with their friends, who went down from the piazzas and terraces to
congratulate them. Mrs. Munger hurried about among them, saying something
to each group. She caught sight of Mr. Peck and Mr. Savor, and she ran
after them, arriving with them where Annie sat.

"I hope you were not anxious about Idella," Annie said, laughing.

"No; I didn't miss her at once," said the minister simply; "and then I
thought she had merely gone off with some of the other children who were
playing about."

"You shall talk all that over later," said Mrs. Munger. "Now, Miss Kilburn,
I want you and Mr. Peck and Mr. and Mrs. Savor to stay for a cup of coffee
that I'm going to give our friends out there. Don't you think they deserve
it? Wasn't it a wonderful success? They must be frightfully exhausted. Just
go right out to them. I'll be with you in one moment. Oh yes, the child!
Well, bring her into the house, Mrs. Savor; I'll find a place for her, and
then you can go out with me."

"I guess you won't get Maria away from her very easy," said Mr. Savor,
laughing. His wife stood with the child's cheek pressed tight against hers.

"Oh, I'll manage that," said Mrs. Munger. "I'm counting on Mrs. Savor."
She added in a hurried undertone to Annie: "I've asked a number of the
workpeople to stay--representative workpeople, the foremen in the different
shops and their families--and you'll find your friends of all classes
together. It's a great day for the Social Union!" she said aloud. "I'm sure
_you_ must feel that, Mr. Peck. Miss Kilburn and I have to thank you
for saving us from a great mistake at the outset, and now your staying,"
she continued, "will give it just the appearance we want. I'm going to keep
your little girl as a hostage, and you shall not go till I let you. Come,
Mrs. Savor!" She bustled away with Mrs. Savor, and Mr. Peck reluctantly
accompanied Annie down over the lawn.

He was silent, but Mr. Savor was hilarious. "Well, Mr. Putney," he said,
when he joined the group of which Putney was the centre, "you done that in
apple-pie order. I never see anything much better than the way you carried
on with Mrs. Wilmington."

"Thank you, Mr. Savor," said Putney; "I'm glad you liked it. You couldn't
say I was trying to flatter her up much, anyway."

"No, no!" Mr. Savor assented, with delight in the joke.

"Well, Annie," said Putney. He shook hands with her, and Mrs. Putney, who
was there with Dr. Morrell, asked her where she had sat.

"We kept looking all round for you."

"Yes," said Putney, with his hand on his boy's shoulder, "we wanted to know
how you liked the Mercutio."

"Ralph, it was incomparable!"

"Well, that will do for a beginning. It's a little cold, but it's in the
right spirit. You mean that the Mercutio wasn't comparable to the Nurse."

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