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

Daniel G. Brinton - "The Annals of the Cakchiquels"

L. Schipper - "De Liereman"

Louisa Stuart Costello - "Béarn and the Pyrenees"

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.

Confession

W >> W. Gilmore Simms >> Confession




"I know what you say is reasonable--is just; but, dear Edward, she
is my mother, and she is alone."

I yielded to her wishes. Could I else? My letter to her mother
concluded with a respectful entreaty that she would take apartments
in our dwelling, and a chair at our table, and lessen, to this
extent, the expenses of her own establishment.

"What!" exclaimed the frenzied woman to Julia's aunt, to whom the
charge of presenting the communication was committed--"what! eat
the bread of that insolent and ungrateful wretch? Never! never!"

She flung the epistle from her with disdain; and, to confess a truth,
though, on Julia's account, I should have wished a reconciliation,
I was by no means sorry, on my own, that such was her ultimatum. I
gave myself little further concern about this foolish person, and
was happy to see that in a short time my wife appeared to recover
from the sadness and stupor which the death of her father and the
temper of her mother had naturally induced. The truth is, she had,
for so long a period previously to her marriage, suffered from the
persecutions of the latter, and moaned over the shame and imbecility
of the former, that her present situation was one of great relief,
and, for a while, of comparative happiness.

We lived in a pleasant cottage in the suburbs. A broad and placid
lake spread out before our dwelling; and its tiny billows, under
the pressure of the sweet southwestern breezes, beat almost against
our very doors. Green and shady groves environed us on three sides,
and sheltered us from the intrusive gaze of the highway; and never
was a brighter collection of flowers and blossoms clustered around
any habitation of hope and happiness before. I rented the cottage
on moderate terms, and furnished it neatly, but simply, as became
my resources. All things considered, the prospect was fair and
promising before us. Julia had few toils, and ample leisure for
painting and music, for both of which she had considerable taste;
for the former art, in particular, she possessed no small talent.

Our city, indeed, seemed one peculiarly calculated for these arts.
Our sky was blue--deeply, beautifully blue; our climate mild and
delightful. Our people were singularly endowed with the genius
for graceful and felicitous performances. Music was an ordinary
attribute of the great mass; and in no community under the sun was
there such an overflow of talent in painting and sculpture. It was
the grand error of our wise heads to fancy that our city could be
made one of great trade; and, in a vain struggle to give it some
commercial superiority over its neighbor communities, the wealth
of the people was thrown away upon projects that yielded nothing;
and the arts were left neglected in a region which might have
been made--and might still be made--if not exclusively, at least
pre-eminently their own. The ordinary look of the women was beauty,
the ordinary accent was sweetness. The soft moonlight evenings were
rendered doubly harmonious by the tender tinkling of the wandering
guitar, or the tones of the plaintive flute; while, from every
third dwelling, rose the more stately but scarcely sweeter melodies
stricken by pliant fingers from the yielding soul of the divine
piano. The tastes even of the mechanic were refined by this language,
the purest In which passion ever speaks; and an ambition--the result
of the highest tone of aristocratic influence upon society--prompted
his desires to purposes and a position to which in other regions
he is not often permitted to aspire. These influences were assisted
by the peculiar location of our city--by its suburban freedom from all
closeness; its innumerable gardens, the appanage of every household;
its piazzas, verandahs, porches; its broad and minstrel-wooing rivers;
and the majestic and evergreen forests, which grew and gathered
around us on every hand. If ever there was a city intended by nature
more particularly than another for the abodes and the offices of
art, it was ours. It will become so yet: the mean, money-loving
soul of trade can not always keep it from its destinies. We may
never see it in our day; but so surely as we live, and as it shall
live, will it become an Athens in our land--a city of empire by
the sea, renowned for genius and taste--and the chosen retreat of
muses, younger and more vigorous, and not less lovely, than the
old!

Julia was in a very high degree impregnated with the taste and
desire for art which seemed so generally the characteristic of our
people. I speak not now of the degree of skill which she possessed.
Her teacher was a foreigner, and a mere mechanic; but, while
he taught her only the ordinary laws of painting, her natural
endowment wrought more actively in favor of her performances. She
soon discovered how much she could learn from the little which her
teacher knew; and when she made this discovery, she ceased to have
any use for his assistance. Books, the study of the old masters,
and such of the new as were available to her, served her infinitely
more in the prosecution of her efforts; and these I stimulated by
all means in my power: for I esteemed her natural endowments to
be very high, and very well knew how usual it is for young ladies,
after marriage, to give up those tastes and accomplishments which
had distinguished and heightened their previous charms. It was quite
enough that I admired the art, and tasked her to its pursuit, to
make her cling to it with alacrity and love. We wandered together
early in the morning and at the coming on of evening, over all the
sweet, enticing scenes which were frequent in our suburbs. Environed
by two rivers, wide and clear, with deep forests beyond--a broad
bay opening upon the sea in front--lovely islands of gleaming sand,
strewn at pleasant intervals, seeming, beneath the transparent
moonlight, the chosen places of retreat for naiads from the deep
and fairies from the grove--there was no lack of objects to delight
the eye and woo the pencil to its performances. Besides, never was
blue sky, and gold-and-purple sunset, more frequent, more rich,
more shifting in its shapes and colors, from beauty to superior
beauty, than in our latitude. The eye naturally turned up to it
with a sense of hunger; the mind naturally felt the wish to record
such hues and aspects for the use of venerating love; and the eager
spirit, beginning to fancy the vision wrought according to its own
involuntary wish, seemed spontaneously to cry aloud, in the language
of the artist, on whom the consciousness of genius was breaking
with a sun-burst for the first time, "I, too, am a painter!"

Julia's studio was soon full of beginnings. Fragmentary landscapes
were all about her. Like most southrons, she did not like to finish.
There is an impatience of toil--of its duration at least--in the
southern mind, which leaves it too frequently unperforming. This
is a natural characteristic of an excitable people. People easily
moved are always easily diverted from their objects. People of very
vivid fancy are also very capricious. There is yet another cause
for the non-performance of the southern mind--its fastidiousness.
In a high state of social refinement, the standards of taste become
so very exacting, that the mind prefers not to attempt, rather
than to offend that critical judgment which it feels to be equally
active in its analysis and rigid in its requisitions. Genius and
ambition must be independent of such restraints. "Be bold, be bold,
be bold!" is the language of encouragement in Spenser; and when
he says, at the end, "Be not too bold," we are to consider the
qualification as simply a quiet caution not to allow proper courage
to rush into rashness and insane license. The GENIUS that suffers
itself to be fettered by the PRECISE, will perhaps learn how
to polish marble, but will never make it live, and will certainly
never live very long itself!

With books and music, painting and flowers, we passed the happy
moments of the honeymoon. I yielded as little of myself and my mind
to my office and clients, in that period, as I possibly could. My
cottage was my paradise. My habits, as might be inferred from my
history, were singularly domestic. Doomed, as I had been, from my
earliest years, to know neither friends nor parents; isolated, in
my infancy, from all those tender ties which impress upon the heart,
for all succeeding years, tokens of the most endearing affection;
denied the smiles of those who yet filled my constant sight--my
life was a long yearning for things of love--for things to love!
While the struggle continued between Julia's parents and myself,
though confiding in her love, I had yet no confidence in my own
hope to realize and to secure it. Now that it was mine--mine, at
last--I grew uxorious in its contemplation. Like the miser, I had
my treasure at home, and I hastened home to survey it with precisely
the same doubts, and hopes, and fears, which the disease of avarice
prompts in the unhappy heart of its victim To this disease, in
chief, I have to attribute all my future sorrows; but the time
is not yet for that. It is my joys now that I have to contemplate
and describe. How I dwelt, and how I dreamed! how I seemed to tread
on air, in the unaccustomed fullness of my spirit! how my whole
soul, given up to the one pursuit, I fondly fancied had secured
its object! I fancied--nay, for the time, I was happy! Surely, I
was happy!






CHAPTER XVI.

THE HAPPY SEASON.





Surely, I then was happy! I can not deceive myself as to the
character of those brief Eden moments of security and peace. Even
now, lone as I appear in the sight of others--degraded as I feel
myself--even now I look back on our low white cottage, by the
shores of that placid lake--its little palings gleaming sweetly
through its dense green foliage--recall those happy, halcyon days,
and feel that we both, for the time, had attained the secret--the
secret worth all the rest--of an enjoyment actually felt, and
quite as full, flush, and satisfactory, as it had seemed in the
perspective. Possession had taken nothing of the gusto from hope.
Truth had not impaired a single beauty of the ideal. I looked in
Julia's face at morning when I awakened, and her loveliness did
not fade. My lips, that drank sweetness from hers, did not cease
to believe the sweetness to be there--as pure, as warm, as full
of richness, as when I had only dreamed of their perfections. Our
days and nights were pure, and gentle, and fond. One twenty-four
hours shall speak for all.

When we rose at morning, we prepared for a ramble, either into the
woods, or along the banks of the lovely river that lay west of, and
at a short distance only from, our dwelling. There, wandering, as
the sun rose, we imparted to each other's eyes the several objects
of beauty which his rising glance betrayed. Sometimes we sat
beneath a tree, while she hurriedly sketched a clump of woods, the
winding turn of the shore, its occasional crescent form or abrupt
headland, as they severally appeared in a new light, and at a happy
moment of time, beneath our vision. The songs of pleasant birds
allured us on; the sweet scent of pines and myrtle refreshed us;
and a gay, wholesome, hearty spirit was awakened in our mutual
bosoms, as thus, day after day, while, like the d&y, our hearts
were in their first youth, we resorted to the ever-fresh mansions
of the sovereign Nature. This habit produces purity of feeling,
and continues the habit in its earliest simplicity. The childlike
laws which it encourages and strengthens are those which virtue
most loves, and which strained forms of society are the first to
overthrow. The pure tastes of youth are those which are always
most dear to humanity; and love is easy of access, and peace not
often a stranger to the mind, where these tastes preserve their
ascendency.

My profession was something at variance with these tastes and
feelings. The very idea of law, which presupposes the frequent
occurrence of injustice, engenders, by its practice, a habit of
suspicion. To throw doubt upon the fact, and defeat and prevent
convictions of the probable, are habits which lawyers soon acquire.
This is natural from the daily encounter with bad and striving
men--men who employ the law as an instrument by which to evade
right, or inflict wrong; and, this apart, the acute mind loves,
for its own sake, the very exercise of doubt, by which ingenuity
is put in practice, and an adroit discrimination kept constantly
at work.

I was saved, however, from something of this danger. The injustice
which I had been subjected to, in my own boyhood, had filled me
with the keenest love for the right. The idea of injustice aroused
my sternest feelings of resistance. I had adopted the law as
a profession with something of a patriotic feeling. I felt that
I could make it an instrument for putting down the oppressor, the
wrong-doer--for asserting right, and maintaining innocence! I had
my admiration, too, at that period, of that logical astuteness,
that wonderful tenacity of hold and pursuit, and discrimination
of attribute and subject, which distinguish this profession beyond
all others, and seem to confirm the assumption made in its behalf,
by which it has been declared the perfection of human reason. It
will not be subtracting anything from this estimate, if I express
my conviction, founded upon my own experience, that, though such
may be the character of the law as an abstract science, it deserves
no such encomium as it is ordinarily practised. Lawyers are too
commonly profound only in the technicalities of the profession;
and a very keen study and acquaintance with these--certainly a too
great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers--leads
to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful
(sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of
knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason,
and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those
ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely upon
continual sounding to grope their way along the accustomed shores.
Let them once leave the shores, and get beyond the reach of their
plummets, and the good ship must owe its safety to fortune and the
favor of the winds, for further skill is none.

I did not find the practice of the law affect my taste for domestic
pleasures; on the contrary, it stimulated and preserved them. After
toiling a whole morning in the courts, it was a sweet reprieve to
be allowed to hurry off to my quiet cottage, and hear the one dear
voice of my household, and examine the quiet pictures. These never
stunned me with clamors; I was never pestered by them to determine
the meum et tuum between noisy disputants, neither of whom is exactly
right. There, my eye could repose on the sweetest scenes--scenes
of beauty and freshness-the shady verdure of the woods, the rich
variety of flowers, and pure, calm, transparent waters, hallowed
by the meek glances of the matron moon. No creature could have
been more gentle than my wife. She met me with a composed smile,
equally bright and meek. I never heard a complaint from her
lips. The evils of which other men complain--the complaints about
servants, scoldings about delay or dinner--never reached my ears.
The kindest solicitude that, in my fatigue, or amid the toils of
a business of which wives can know little, and for which they make
too little allowance, there should be nothing at home to make me
irritable or give me disquiet, distinguished equally her sense and
her affection. If it became her duty to communicate any unpleasant
intelligence--any tidings which might awaken anger or impatience--she
carefully waited foi the proper time, when the excitement of my
blood was overcome, and repose of blood and brain had naturally
brought about a kindred composure of mind.

Our afternoons were usually spent in the shade of the garden or
piazza. Sometimes, I sat by her while she was sketching. At others,
she helped me to dress and train my garden-vines. Now and then
we renewed our rambles of the morning, heedfully observing the
different aspects of the same scenes and object, which had then
delighted us, under the mellowing smiles of the sun at its decline.
With books, music, and chess, our evenings passed away without
our consciousness; and day melted into night, and night departed
and gave place to the new-born day, as quietly as if life had, in
truth, become to us a great instrument of harmony, which bore us
over the smooth seas of Time, to the gentle beating of fairy and
unseen minstrelsy. Truly, then, we were two happy children. The
older children of this world, stimulated by stronger tastes and more
lofty indulgences, may smile at the infantile simplicity of such
resources and modes of enjoyment. They were childish, but perhaps
not the less wise for that. Infancy lies very near to heaven.
Childhood is a not unfit study for angels; and happy were it for us
could we maintain the hearts and the hopes of that innocent period
for a longer day within our bosoms. In our world we grow too fast,
too presumptuously. We live on too rich food, moral and intellectual.
The artifices of our tastes prove most fatally the decline of our
reason. But, for us--we two linked hearts, so segregated from all
beside--we certainly lived the lives of children for a while. But
we were not to live thus always. In some worldly respects, _I_ was
still a child: I cared little for its pomps, its small honors, its
puny efforts, its tinselly displays. But I had vices of mind--vices
of my own--sufficient to embitter the social world where all seems
now so sweet--where all, in truth, WAS sweet, and pure, and worthy
--and which might, under other circumstances, have been kept so to
the last. I am now to describe a change!






CHAPTER XVII.

THE EVIL PRINCIPLE.





Heretofore, I have spoken of the blind hearts of others--of Mr.
Clifford and his wilful wife--I have yet said little to show the
blindness of my own. This task is now before me, and, with whatever
reluctance, the exhibition shall resolutely be made. I have
described a couple newly wed--eminently happy--blessed with tolerable
independence--resources from without and within--dwelling in the
smiles of Heaven, and not uncheered by the friendly countenance of
man. I am to display the cloud, which hangs small at first, a mere
speck, but which is to grow to a gloomy tempest that is to swallow
up the loveliness of the sky, and blacken with gloom and sorrow
the fairest aspects of the earth. I am to show the worm in the
bud which is to bring blight--the serpent in the garden which is
to spoil the Eden. Wo, beyond all other woes, that this serpent
should be engendered in one's own heart, producing its blindness,
and finally working its bane! Yet, so it is! The story is a painful
one to tell; the task is one of self-humiliation. But the truth
may inform others--may warn, may strengthen, may save--before their
hearts shall be utterly given up to that blindness which must end
in utter desperation and irretrievable overthrow.

If the reader has not been utterly unmindful of certain moral
suggestions which have been thrown out passingly in my previous
narrative, he will have seen that, constitutionally, I am of an
ardent, impetuous temper--an active mind, ready, earnest, impatient
of control--seeking the difficult for its own sake, and delighting
in the conquest which is unexpected by others.

Such a nature is usually frank and generous. It believes in the
affections--it depends upon them. It freely gives its own, but
challenges the equally free and spontaneous gift of yours in return.
It has little faith in the things which fill the hearts of the mere
worldlings. Worldly honors may delight it, but not worldly toys. It
has no veneration for gewgaws. The shows of furniture and of dress
it despises. The gorgeous equipage is an encumbrance to it; the
imposing jewel it would not wear, lest it might subtract something
from that homage which it prefers should be paid to the wearer.
It is all selfish--thoroughly selfish--but not after the world's
fashion of selfishness. It hoards nothing, and gives quite as much
as it asks. What does it ask? What? It asks for love--devoted
attachment; the homage of the loved one and the friends; the
implicit confidence of all around it! Ah! can anything be more
exacting? Cruelly exacting, if it be not worthy of that it asks!

Imagine such a nature, denied from the beginning! The parents of
its youth are gone!--the brother and the sister--the father and the
friend! It is destitute, utterly, of these! It is also destitute
of those resources of fortune which are supposed to be sufficient
to command them. It is thrown upon the protection, the charge of
strangers. Not strangers--no! From strangers, perhaps, but little
could be expected. It is thrown upon the care of relatives--a
father's brother! Could the tie be nearer? Not well! But it had
been better if strangers had been its guardians. Then it might
have learned to endure more patiently. At least, it would have felt
less keenly the pangs inflicted by neglect, contumely, injustice.
In this situation it grows up, like some sapling torn from its parent
forest, its branches hacked off, its limbs lacerated! It grows up
in a stranger soil. The sharp winds assail it from every quarter.
But still it lives--it grows. It grows wildly, rudely, ungracefully;
but it is strong and tough, in consequence of its exposure and its
trials. Its vitality increases with every collision which shakes
and rends it; until, in the pathetic language of relatives unhappily
burdened with such encumbrances, "it seems impossible to kill it!"

I will not say that mine tried to kill me, but I do say that they
took precious little care that I was not killed. The effect upon
my body was good, however--the effect of their indifference. This
roughening process is a part of physical training which very few
parents understand. It is essential--should be insisted on--but it
must not be accompanied with a moral roughening, which forces upon
the mind of the pupil the conviction that the ordeal is meant for
his destruction rather than for his good. There will be a recoil of
the heart--a cruel recoil from the humanities--if such a conviction
once fills the mind. It was this recoil which I felt! With warm
affections seeking for objects of love--with feelings of hope and
veneration, imploring for altars to which to attach themselves--I
was commanded to go alone. The wilderness alone was open to me:
what wonder if my heart grew wild and capricious even as that of
the savage who dwells only amid their cheerless recesses? With
a smile judiciously bestowed--with a kind word, a gentle tone, an
occasional voice of earnest encouragement--my uncle and aunt might
have fashioned my heart at their pleasure. I should have been as
clay in the hands of the potter--a pliant willow in the grasp of
the careful trainer. A nature constituted like mine is, of all
others, the most flexible; but it is also, of all others, the most
resisting and incorrigible. Approach it with a judicious regard
to its affections, and you do with it what you please. Let it but
fancy that it is the victim of your injustice, however slight,
and the war is an interminable one between you!

Thus did I learn the first lessons of suspiciousness. They attended
me to the schoolhouse; they governed and made me watchful there.
The schoolhouse, the play-places--the very regions of earnest faith
and unlimited confidence--produced no such effects in me. They might
have done so, had I ceased, on going to school, to see my relatives
any longer. But the daily presence of my uncle and aunt, with their
system of continued injustice, at length rendered my suspicious
moods habitual. I became shy. I approached nobody, or approached
them with doubt and watchfulness. I learned, at the earliest
period, to look into character, to analyze conduct, to pry into the
mysterious involutions of the working minds around me. I traced,
or fancied that I traced, the performance to the unexpressed and
secret motive in which it had its origin. I discovered, or believed
that I discovered, that the world was divided into banditti and
hypocrites. At that day I made little allowance for the existence
of that larger class than all, who happen to be the victims. Unless
this were the larger class, the other two must very much and very
rapidly diminish. My infant philosophy did not carry me very deeply
into the recesses of my own heart. It was enough that I felt some
of its dearest rights to be outraged--I did not care to inquire
whether it was altogether right itself.

At length, there was a glimpse of dawn amid all this darkness. The
world was not altogether evil. All hearts were not shut against me;
and in the sweet smiles of Julia Clifford, in her kind attentions,
soothing assurances, and fond entreaties, there was opportunity,
at last, for my feelings to overflow. Like a mountain-stream
long pent up, which at length breaks through its confinements, my
affections rushed into the grateful channel which her pliant heart
afforded me. They were wild, and strong, and, devoted, in proportion
to their long denial and restraint. Was it not natural enough that
I should love with no ordinary attachment--that my love should be
an impetuous torrent--all-devoted--struggling, striving--rushing
only in the one direction--believing, in truth, that there was none
other in the world in which to run?

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