Ella Wheeler Wilcox - "Custer, and Other Poems."

J. B. Salmond - "My Man Sandy"

various various - "The Belgian Cookbook"

John Philip Newman - "'America for Americans!'"

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 took the way to my office. It was not often that I went thither
before breakfast. But William Edgerton had been in the habit of
doing so. He lived in the neighborhood, and his father had taught
him this habit during the period when he was employed in studying
the profession. It might be that I should find him there on the
present occasion. Such was my notion. What farther thought I had
I know not; but a vague suggestion that, in that quiet hour--there--without
eye to see, or hand to interpose, I might drag from his heart the
fearful secret--I might compel confession, take my vengeance, and
rid myself finally of that cruel agony which was making me its
miserable puppet. Crude, wild notions these, but very natural.

I turned the corner of the street. The window of my office was open.
"He is then there," I muttered to myself; and my teeth clutched each
other closely. I buttoned my coat. My heart was swelling. I looked
around me, and up to the windows. The street was very silent--the
grave not more so. I strode rapidly across, threw open the door
of the office which stood ajar, and beheld, not the person whom I
sought, but his venerable father.

The sight of that white-headed old man filled me with a sense of
shame and degradation. What had he not done for me? How great his
assistance, how kind his regards, how liberal his offices. He had
rescued me from the bondage of poverty. He had put forth the hand
of help, with a manly grasp of succor at the very moment when it was
most needed; had helped to make me what I was; and, for all these,
I had come to put to death his only son. A revulsion of feeling
took place within my bosom. These thoughts were instantaneous--a
sort of lightning-flash from the moral world of thought. I stood
abashed; brought to my senses in an instant, and was scarcely able
to conceal my discomfiture and confusion. I stood before him with
the feeling, and must have worn the look, of a culprit. Fortunately,
he did not perceive my confusion. Poor old man! Cares of his
own--cares of a father, too completely occupied his mind, to suffer
his senses to discharge their duties with freedom.

"I am glad to see you, Clifford, though I did not expect it. Young
men of the present day are not apt to rise so early."

"I must confess, sir, it is not my habit."

"Better if it were. The present generation, it seems to me, may be
considered more fortunate, in some respects, than the past, though
they are scarcely wiser. They seem to me exempt from such necessities
as encountered their fathers. Their tasks are fewer--their labor
is lighter--"

"Are their cares the lighter in consequence?" I demanded.

"That is the question," he replied. "For myself, I think not. They
grow gray the sooner. They have fewer tasks, but heavier troubles.
They live better in some respects. They have luxuries which, in
my day, youth were scarcely permitted to enjoy; and which, indeed,
were not often enjoyed by age. But they have little peace:-and,
look at the bankruptcies of our city. They are without number--they
produce no shame--do not seem to affect the credit of the parties;
and, certainly, in no respect diminish their expenditures. They live
as if the present day were the last they had to live; and living
thus, they must live dishonestly. It is inevitable. The moral sense
is certainly in a much lower condition in our country, than I have
ever known it. What can be the reason?"

"The facility of procuring money, perhaps. Money is the most
dangerous of human possessions."

"There can be none other. Clifford!"

"Sir."

"I change the subject abruptly. Have you seen my son lately,
Clifford?"

The question was solemnly, suddenly spoken. It staggered me. What
could it mean? That there was a meaning in it--a deep meaning--was
unquestionable. But of what nature? Did the venerable man suspect
my secret--could he by any chance conjecture my purpose? It is
one quality of a mind not exactly satisfied of the propriety of
its proceedings, to be suspicious of all things and persons--to
fancy that the consciousness which distresses itself, is also the
consciousness of its neighbors. Hence the blush upon the cheek--the
faltering accents--the tremulousncss of limb, and feebleness of
movement. For a moment after the old man spoke--troubled with this
consciousness, I could not answer. But my self-esteem came to my
relief--nay, it had sufficed to conceal my disquiet. My looks were
subdued to a seeming calm--my voice was un-broken, while I answered:--

"I have seen him within a few days, sir--a few nights ago we were
at Mrs. Delaney's party. But why the question, sir?--what troubles
you?"

"Strange that you have not seen! Did you not remark the alteration
in his appearance?"

"I must confess, sir, I did not; but, perhaps, I did not remark
him closely among the crowd."

"He is altered--terribly altered, Clifford. It is very strange that
you have not seen it. It is visible to myself--his mother--all the
family, and some of its friends We tremble for his life. He is a
mere skeleton--moves without life or animation, feebly--his cheeks
are pale and thin, his lips white, and his eyes have an appearance
which, beyond anything besides, distresses me--either lifelessly
dull, or suddenly flushed up with an expression of wildness, which
occurs so suddenly as to distress us with the worst apprehensions
of his sanity."

"Indeed, sir!" I exclaimed with natural surprise.

"So it appears to us, his mother and myself, though, as it has
escaped your eyes, I trust that we have exaggerated it. That we have
not imagined all of it, however, we have other proofs to show. His
manner is changed of late, and most of his habits. The change is
only within the last six months; so suddenly made that it has been
forced upon our sight. Once so frank, he is now reserved and shrinking
to the last degree; speaks little; is reluctant to converse; and,
I am compelled to believe, not only avoids my glance, but fears
it."

"It is very strange that he should do so, sir. I can think of no
reason why he should avoid YOUR glance. Can you sir? Have you any
suspicions?"

"I have."

"Ha! have you indeed?"

The old man drew his chair closer to me, and, putting his hand on
mine, with eyes in which the tears, big, slow-gathering, began to
fill--trickling at length, one by one, through the venerable furrows
of his cheeks--he replied in faltering accents:--

"A terrible suspicion, Clifford. I am afraid he drinks; that he
frequents gambling-houses; that, in short, he is about to be lost
to us, body and soul, for ever."

Deep and touching was the groan that followed from that old man's
bosom. I hastened to relieve him.

"I am sure, sir, that you do your son great injustice. I cannot
conceive it possible that he should have fallen into these habits"

"He is out nightly--late--till near daylight. But two hours ago he
returned home. Let me confess to you, Clifford, what I should be
loath to confess to anybody else. I followed him last night. He
took the path to the suburbs, and I kept him in sight almost till
he reached your dwelling. Then I lost him. He moved too rapidly
then for my old limbs, and disappeared among those groves of wild
orange that fill your neighborhood. I searched them as closely as
I could in the imperfect starlight, but could see nothing of him.
I am told that there are gambling-houses, notorious enough, in the
suburbs just beyond you. I fear that he found shelter in these--that
he finds shelter in them nightly."

I scarcely breathed while listening to the unhappy father's,
narrative. There was one portion of it to which I need not refer
the reader, as calculated to confirm my own previous convictions.
I struggled with my feelings, however, in respect for his. I kept
them down and spoke.

"In this one fact, Mr. Edgerton, I see nothing to alarm you. Your
son may have been engaged far more innocently than you imagine. He
is young--you know too well the practices of young men. As for the
drinking he is perhaps the very last person whom I should suspect
of excess. I have always thought his temperance unquestionable."

"Until recently, I should have had no fears myself. But connecting
one fact with another--his absence all night, nightly--the
stealthiness with which he departs from home after the family has
retired--the stealthiness with which he returns just before day--his
visible agitation when addressed--and, oh Clifford! worst of all
signs, the shrinking of his eye beneath mine and his mother's--the
fear to meet, and the effort to avoid us--these are the signs which
most pain me, and excite my apprehensions But look at his face and
figure also. The haggard misery of the one, sign of sleeplessness
and late watching--the attenuated feebleness of the other, showing
the effects of some practices, no matter of what particular sort,
which are undermining his constitution, and rapidly tending to
destroy him. If you but look in his eye as I have done, marking
its wildness, its wandering, its sensible expression of shame--you
can hardly fail to think with me that something is morally wrong.
He is guilty--"

"He is guilty!"

I echoed the words of the father, involuntarily. They struck the
chord of conviction in my own soul, and seemed to me the language
of a judgment.

"Ha! You know it, then?" cried the old man. "Speak! Tell me,
Clifford--what is his folly? What is the particular guilt and shame
into which he has fallen?"

I knew not that I had spoken until I heard these words. The
agitation of the father was greatly increased. Truly, his sorrows
were sad to look upon. I answered him:--

"I simply echoed your words, sir--I am ignorant, as I said before;
and, indeed, I may venture, I think, with perfect safety, to assure
you that gaming and drink have nothing to do with his appearance
and deportment. I should rather suspect him of some improper--SOME
GUILTY CONNECTION--"

I felt that, in the utterance of these words, I too had become
excited. My voice did not rise, but I knew that it had acquired
an intenseness which I as quickly endeavored to suppress. But the
father had already beheld the expression in my face, and perhaps
the sudden change in my tones grated harshly upon his ear. I could
see that his looks became more eager and inquiring. I could note
a greater degree of apprehension and anxiety in his eyes. I subdued
myself, though not without some effort.

"William Edgerton may be erring, sir--that I do not deny, for I have
seen too little of him of late to say anything of his proceedings;
but I am very confident when I say that excess in liquor can not
be a vice of his; and as for gaming, I should fancy that he was the
last person in the world likely to be tempted to the indulgence of
such a practice."

The father shook his head mournfully.

"Why this shame?--this fear? Besides, Clifford, what we know of
our son makes us equally sure that women have nothing to do with
his excesses. But these conjectures help us nothing. Clifford, I
must look to you."

"What can I do for you, sir?"

"He is my son, my only son--the care of many sad, sleepless hours.
It was his mother's hope that he would be our solace in the weary
and the sad ones. You can not understand yet how much the parent
lives in the child--how many of his hopes settle there. William has
already disappointed us in our ambition. He will be nothing that
we hoped him to be; but of this I complain not. But that he should
become base, Clifford; a night-prowler in the streets; a hanger-on
of stews and gaming-houses; a brawler at an alehouse bar; a man
to skulk through life and society; down-looking in his father's
sight; despised in that of the community--oh! these are the cruel,
the dreadful apprehensions!"

"But you know not that he is any of these."

"True; but there is something grievously wrong when the son dares
not meet the eye of a parent with manly fearlessness; when he
looks without joyance at the face of a mother, and shrinks from
her endearments as if he felt that he deserved them not. William
Edgerton is miserable; that is evident enough. Now, misery does
not always imply guilt; but, in his case, what else should it
imply! He has had no misfortunes. He is independent; he is beloved
by his parents, and by his friends; he has had no denial of the
affections; in short, there is no way of accounting for his conduct
or appearance, but by the supposition that he has fallen into
vicious habits. Whatever these habits are, they are killing him.
He is a mere skeleton; his whole appearance is that of a man
running a rapid course of dissipation which can only advance in
shame, and terminate in death. Clifford, if I have ever served
you in the hour of your need, serve me in this of mine. Save my
son for me. Bring him back from his folly; restore him, if you
can, to peace and purity. See him, will you not? Seek him out;
see him; probe his secret; and tell me what can be done to rescue
him before it be too late."

"Really, Mr. Edgerton, you confound me. What can I do?"

"I know not. Every thing, perhaps! I confess I can not counsel
you. I can not even suggest how you should begin. You must judge
for yourself. You must think and make your approaches according to
your own judgment. Remember, that it is not in his behalf only.
Think of the father, the mother! our hope, our all is at stake. I
speak to you in the language of a child, Clifford. I am a child
in this. This boy has been the apple of our eyes. It is our sight
for which I seek your help. I know your good sense and sagacity.
I know that you can trace out his secret when I should fail. My
feelings would blind me to the truth. They might lead me to use
language which would drive him from me. I leave it all to you. I
know not who else can do for me half so well in a matter of this
sort. Will you undertake it?"

Could I refuse? This question was discussed in all its bearings,
in a few lightning-like progresses of thought. I felt all its
difficulties--anticipated the annoyances to which it would subject
me, and the degree of self-forbearance which it would necessarily
require; yet, when I looked on the noble old gentleman who sat
beside me--his gray hairs, his pleading looks, the recollection of
the deep debt of gratitude which I owed him--I put my hand in his;
I could resist no longer.

"I will try!" was the brief answer which I made him.

"God bless, God speed you!" he exclaimed, squeezing my hand with a
pressure that said everything, and we separated; he for his family,
and I for that new task which I had undertaken. How different from
my previous purpose! I was now to seek to save the person whom I
had set forth that morning with the purpose (if I had any purpose)
to destroy. What a volume made up of contradictions and inconsistencies,
strangely bound together, is the moral world of man!






CHAPTER XXXV.

APPLICATON OF "THE QUESTION."





But how to save him? How to approach him? How to keep down my
own sense of wrong, my own feeling of misery, while representing
the wishes and the feelings of that good old man--that venerable
father? These were questions to afflict, to confound me! Still,
I was committed; I must do what I had promised; undertake it at
least; and the conviction that such a task was to be the severest
trial of my manliness, was a conviction that necessarily helped to
strengthen me to go through with it like a man,

What I had heard from Mr. Edgerton in relation to his son, though
new, and somewhat surprising to myself, had not altered, in any
respect, my impressions on the subject of his conduct toward, or
with, my wife. Indeed, it rather served to confirm them. I could
have told the old man, that, in losing all traces of his son in
the neighborhood of my dwelling the night when he pursued him, he
had the most conclusive proofs that he had gone to no gaming-houses.
But where did he go? That was a question for myself. Had he entered
my premises, and hidden himself amidst the foliage where I had myself
so often harbored, while my object had been the secret inspection
of my household? Could it be that he had loitered there during the
last few nights of my wife's illness, in the vain hope of seeing
me take my departure? This was the conclusion which I reached,
and with it came the next thought that he would revisit the spot
again that night. Ha! that thought! "Let him come!" I muttered to
myself. "I will endeavor to be in readiness!"

But, surely, the father was grievously in error; his parental
fear, alone, had certainly drawn the picture of his son's reduced
and miserable condition. I had seen nothing of this. I had observed
that he was shy, incommunicative--seeking to avoid me, as, according
to their showing, he had striven to avoid his parents. So far our
experience had been the same. But I had totally failed to perceive
the marks of suffering or of sin which the vivid feelings of the
father on this subject had insisted were so apparent. I had seen
in Edgerton only the false friend, the traitor, stealing like a
serpent to my bower, to beguile from my side the only object which
made it dear to me. I could see in him only the exulting seducer,
confident in his ability, artful in his endeavors, winning in his
accomplishments, and striving with practised industry of libertinism,
in the prosecution of his cruel schemes. I could see the grace of
his bearing, the ease of his manner, the symmetry of his person,
the neatness of his costume, the superiority of his dancing, the
insinuation of his address. I could see these only! That he looked
miserable--that he was thin to meagreness, I had not seen.

Yet, even were it so, what could this prove, as the father had
conclusively shown, but guilt. Poverty could not trouble him--he
had never been an unrequited lover. He had gone along the stream of
society, indifferent to the lures of beauty, and with a bark that
had always appeared studiously to keep aloof from the shores or
shoals of matrimony. If he was miserable, his misery could only come
from misconduct, not from misfortune. It was a misery engendered
by guilt, and what was that guilt? I KNEW that he did not drink;
and was not his course in regard to Kingsley, as narrated by that
person on the night when we went to the gaming-house together--was
not that sufficient to show that he was no gamester, unless he
happened to be one of the most bare faced of all canting hypocrites,
which I could not believe him to be. What remained, but that my
calculations were right? It was guilt that was sinking him, body
and soul, so that his eye no longer dared to look upward--so that
his ear shrunk from the sounds of those voices which, even in the
language of kindness, were still speaking to him in the severest
language of rebuke. And whom did that guilt concern more completely
than myself? Say that the father was to lose his son, his only
son--what was my loss, what was my shame! and upon whom should
the curse most fully and finally fall, if not upon the wrong-doer,
though it so happened that the ruin of the guilty brought with it
overthrow to the innocent scarcely less complete!

The extent of that guilt of Edgerton?

On this point all was a wilderness, vague, inconclusive, confused
and crowded within my understanding. I believed that he had
approached my wife with evil designs--I believed, without a doubt,
that he had passed the boundaries of propriety in his intercourse
with her; but I believed not that she had fallen! No! I had an
instinctive confidence in her purity, that rendered it apparently
impossible that she should lapse into the grossness of illicit love.
What, then, was my fear? That she did love him, though, struggling
with the tendency of her heart, she had not yielded in the struggle.
I believed that his grace, beauty, and accomplishments--his
persevering attention--his similar tastes--had succeeded in making
an impression upon her soul which had effectually eradicated mine.
I believed that his attentions were sweet to her--that she had
not the strength to reject them; and, though she may have proved
herself too virtuous to yield, she had not been sufficiently strong
to repulse him with virtuous resentment.

That Edgerton had not succeeded, did not lessen HIS offence. The
attempt was an indignity that demanded atonement--that justified
punishment equally severe with that which should have followed a
successful prosecution of his purpose. Women are by nature weak.
They are not to be tempted. He who, knowing their weakness, attempts
their overthrow by that medium, is equally cowardly and criminal.
I could not doubt that he had made this attempt; but now it seemed
necessary that I should suspend my indignation, in obedience with
what appeared to be a paramount duty. A selfish reasoning now
suggested compliance with this duty as a mean for procuring better
intelligence than I already possessed. I need not say that the
doubt was the pain in my bosom. I felt, in the words of the cold
devil Iago, those "damned minutes" of him "who dotes, yet doubts,
suspects, yet strongly loves."

The shapeless character of my fears and suspicions did not by any
means lessen their force and volume. On the contrary it caused
them to loom out through the hazy atmosphere of the imagination,
assuming aspects more huge and terrible, in consequence of their
very indistinctness; as the phantom shapes along the mountains of
the Brocken, gathering and scowling in the morning or the evening
twilight. To obtain more precise knowledge--to be able to subject
to grasp and measure the uncertain phantoms which I feared--was,
if not to reduce their proportions, at least to rid me of that
excruciating suspense, in determining what to do, which was the
natural result of my present ignorance.

With some painstaking, I was enabled to find and force an interview
with Edgerton that very day. He made an effort to elude me--such
an effort as he could make without allowing his object to be seen.
But I was not to be baffled. Having once determined upon my course,
I was a puritan in the inveteracy with which I persevered in it.
But it required no small struggle to approach the criminal, and
so utterly to subdue my own sense of wrong, my suspicions and my
hostility, as to keep in sight no more than the wishes and fears of
the father. I have already boasted of my strength in some respects,
even while exposing my weaknesses in others. That I could persuade
Edgerton and my wife, equally, of my indifference, even at the
moment when I was most agonized by my doubts of their purity, is
a sufficient proof that I possessed a certain sort of strength. It
was a moral strength, too, which could conceal the pangs inflicted
by the vulture, even when it was preying upon the vitals of the
best affections and the dearest hopes of the heart. It was necessary
that I should put all this strength in requisition, as well to do
what was required by the father, as to pierce, with keen eye, and
considerate question, to the secret soul of the witness. I must
assume the blandest manner of our youthful friendship; I must say
kind things, and say them with a certain frank unconsciousness. I
must use the language of a good fellow--a sworn companion--who is
anxious to do justice to my friend's father, and yet had no notion
that my friend himself was doing the smallest thing to justify the
unmeasured fears of the fond old man. Such was my cue at first. I
am not so sure that I pursued it to the end; but of this hereafter.

My attention having been specially drawn to the personal appearance
of William Edgerton, I was surprised, if not absolutely shocked,
to see that the father had scarcely exaggerated the misery of his
condition. He was the mere shadow of his former self. His limbs,
only a year before, had been rounded even to plumpness. They were
now sharp and angular. His skin was pale, his looks haggard; and
that apprehensive shrinking of the eye, which had called forth
the most keen expressions of fear and suspicion from the father's
lips, was the prominent characteristic which commanded my attention
during our brief interview. His eye, after the first encounter,
no longer rose to mine. Keenly did I watch his face, though for an
instant only. A sudden hectic flush mantled its paleness. I could
perceive a nervous muscular movement about his mouth, and he slightly
started when I spoke.

"Edgerton," I said, with tones of good-humored reproach, "there's
no finding you now-a-days. You have the invisible cap. What do you
do with yourself? As for law, that seems destined to be a mourner
so far as you are concerned. She sits like a widow in her weeds.
You have abandoned her: do you mean to abandon your friends also?"

He answered, with a faint attempt to smile:--

"No; I have been to see you often, but you are never at home."

"Ah! I did not hear of it. But if you really wished to see a husband
who has survived the honeymoon, I suspect that home is about the
last place where you should seek for him. Julia did the honors, I
trust?"

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