Various - "A Book Of German Lyrics"

Alexandre Dumas - "Le Capitaine Arena"

L. Frank Baum - "Tik Tok of Oz"

Ruth Edna Kelley - "The Book of Hallowe'en"

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




We separated, finally, with assurances of mutual fidelity--assurances
which, I knew, from the exclusiveness of all my feelings, my
concentrative singleness of character, and entire dependence upon
the beloved object of those affections which were now the sole solace
of my heart, would not be difficult for me to keep. But I doubted
HER strength--HER resolution--against the pressing solicitations
of parents whom she had never been accustomed to withstand. But
she quieted me with that singular earnestness of look and manner
which had once before impressed me previous to our mutual explanation.
Like vulgar thinkers generally, I was apt to confound weakness of
frame and delicacy of organization with a want of courage and moral
resources of strength and consolation.

"Fear nothing for my truth, Edward. Though, in obedience to
my parents, I shall not marry against their will, be sure I shall
never marry against my own."

"Ah, Julia, you think so, but--"

"I know so, Edward. Believe nothing that you hear against me or of
me, which is unfavorable to my fidelity, until you hear it from my
own lips."

"But you will meet me again--soon?"

"No, no, do not ask it, Edward. We must not meet in this manner.
It is not right. It is criminal."

I had soon another proof of the decisive manner in which my uncle
seemed disposed to carry on the war between us. Erring, like
the greater number of our young men, in their ambitious desire to
enter public life prematurely, I was easily persuaded to become a
candidate for the general assembly. I was now just twenty-five--at
a time when young men are not yet released from the bias of early
associations, and the unavoidable influence of guides, who are
generally blind guides. Until thirty, there are few men who think
independently; and, until this habit is acquired--which, in too
many cases, never is acquired--the individual is sadly out of place
in the halls of legislation. It is this premature disposition to
enter into public life, which is the sole origin of the numberless
mistakes and miserable inconsistencies into which our statesmen
fall; which cling to their progress for ever after, preventing
their performances, and baffling them in all their hopes to secure
the confidence of the people. They are broken-down political hacks
in the prime of life, and just at the time when they should be
first entering upon the duties of the public man. Seduced, like
the rest, as well by my own vanity as the suggestions of favoring
friends, I permitted my name to be announced, and engaged actively
in the canvass. Perhaps the feverish state of my mind, in consequence
of my relations with Julia Clifford and her parents, made me more
willing to adopt a measure, about which, at any other time, I
should have been singularly slow and cautious. As a man of proud,
reserved, and suspicious temper, I had little or no confidence in
my own strength with the people; and defeat would be more mortifying
than success grateful to a person of my pride. I fancied, however,
that popular life would somewhat subdue the consuming passions which
were rioting within my bosom; and I threw myself into the thick of
the struggle with all the ardor of a sanguine temperament.

To my surprise and increased vexation, I found my worthy uncle
striving in every possible way, without actually declaring his
purpose, in opposing my efforts and prospects. It is true he did
not utter my name; but he had formed a complete ticket, in which
my name was not; and he was toiling with all the industry of a
thoroughgoing partisan in promoting its success. The cup which he
had commended to my lips was overrunning with the gall of bitterness.
Hostility to me seemed really to have been a sort of monomania
with him from the first. How else was this canton procedure to be
accounted for? how, even with this belief, could it be excused? His
conduct was certainly one of those mysteries of idiosyncracy upon
which the moral philosopher may speculate to doomsday without being
a jot the wiser.

If his desire was to baffle me, he was successful. I was defeated,
after a close struggle, by a meagre majority of seven votes in some
seventeen hundred; and the night after the election was declared,
he gave a ball in honor of the successful candidates, in which
his house was filled to overflowing. I passed the dwelling about
midnight. Music rang from the illuminated parlor. The merry dance
proceeded. All was life, gayety, and rich profusion. And Julia!
even then she might have been whirling in the capricious movements
of the dance with my happy rival--she as happy--unconscious of him
who glided like some angry spectre beneath her windows, and almost
within hearing of her thoughtless voice.

Such were my gloomy thoughts--such the dark and dismal subjects of
my lonely meditations. I did the poor girl wrong. That night she
neither sung nor danced; and when I saw her again, I was shocked at
the visible alteration for the worse which her appearance exhibited
She was now grown thin, almost to meagreness; her cheeks were very
wan, her lips whitened, and her beauty greatly faded in consequence
of her suffering health.

Yet, will it be believed that, in that interview, though such
was her obvious condition, my perverse spirit found the language
of complaint and suspicion more easy than that of devotion and
tenderness. I know that it would be easy, and feel that it would
be natural, to account for and to excuse this brutality, by a
reference to those provocations which I had received from her father. A
warm temper, ardent and glowing, it is very safe to imagine, must
reasonably become soured and perverse by bad treatment and continual
injury. But this for me was no excuse. Julia was a victim also of
the same treatment, and in far greater degree than myself, as she
was far less able to endure it. Mine, however, was the perverseness
of impetuous blood--unrestrained, unchecked--having a fearful
will, an impetuous energy, and, gradually, with success and power,
swelling to the assertion of its own unqualified dominion--the
despotism of the blind heart.

Julia bore my reproaches until I was ashamed of them. Her submission
stung me, and I loved then too ardently not to arrive in time at
justice, and to make atonement. Would I had made it sooner! When I
had finished all my reproaches and complainings, she answered all
by telling me that the affair with young Roberts had been just
closed, and she hoped finally, by her unqualified rejection of
his suit, even though backed by all her father's solicitations,
complaints, nay, threats and anger. How ungenerous and unmanly,
after this statement had been made, appeared all the bitter eludings
in which I had indulged! I need not say what efforts I made to
atone for my precipitation and injustice; and how easily I found
forgiveness from one who knew not how to harbor unkindness--and
if she even had the feeling in her bosom, entertained it as one
entertains his deadliest foe, and expelled it as soon as its real
character was discovered.






CHAPTER VII.

TEMPTATION.





Thus stood the affair between my fair cousin and myself--a
condition of things seriously and equally affecting her health and
my temper--when an explosion took place, of a nature calculated to
humble my uncle and myself, if not in equal degree, or to the same
attitude, at least to a most mortifying extent in both cases. I
have not stated before--indeed, it was not until the affair which
I am now about to relate had actually exploded, that I was made
acquainted with any of the facts which produced it--that, prior to
my father's death, there had been some large business connections
between himself and my uncle. In those days secret connections in
business, however dangerous they might be in social, and more than
equivocal in moral respects, were considered among the legitimate
practices of tradesmen. What was the particular sort of relations
existing between my father and uncle, I am not now prepared to
state, nor is it absolutely necessary to my narrative. It is enough
for me to say that an exposure of them took place, in part, in
consequence of some discovering made by my father's unsatisfied
creditors, by which the obscure transactions of thirty years
were brought to light, or required to be brought to light; and in
the development of which, the fair business fame of my uncle was
likely to be involved in a very serious degree--not to speak of
the inevitable effects upon his resources of a discovery and proof
of fraudulent concealment. The reputation of my father must have
suffered seriously, had it not been generally known that he left
nothing--a fact beyond dispute from the history of my own career,
in which neither goods nor chattels, lands nor money, were suffered
to enure to my advantage.

The business was brought to me. The merchant who brought it, and who
had been busy for some years in tracing out the testimony, so far
as it could be procured, gave me to understand that he had determined
to place it in my hands for two reasons: firstly, to enable me
to release the memory of my father from the imputation--under any
circumstances discreditable--of bankruptcy, by compelling my uncle
to disgorge the sums which he had appropriated, and which, as was
alleged, would satisfy all my father's creditors; and, secondly,
to give me an opportunity of revenging my own wrongs upon one, of
whose course of conduct toward me the populace had already seen
enough, during the last election, to have a tolerably correct idea.

I examined the papers, thanked my client for his friendly intentions,
but declined taking charge of the case for two other reasons. My
relations to the dead and to the living were either of them sufficient
reasons for this determination. I communicated the grounds of
action, in a respectful letter, to my uncle, and soon discovered,
by the alarm which he displayed in consequence, that the cause
of the complaint was in all probability good. The case belonged to
the equity jurisdiction, and the relator soon filed his bill.

My uncle's tribulation may be conjectured from the fact that
he called upon me, and seemed anxious enough to bury the hatchet.
He wished me to take part in the proceedings--insisted, somewhat
earnestly, and strove very hard to impress me with the conviction
that my father's memory demanded that I should devote myself to the
task of meeting and confounding the creditor who thus, as it were,
had set to work to rake up the ashes of the dead; but I answered
all this very briefly and very dryly:--

"If my father has participated in this fraud, he has reaped none
of its pleasant fruits. He lived poor, and died poor. The public
know that; and it will be difficult to persuade them, with a due
knowledge of these facts, that he deliberately perpetrated such
unprofitable villany. Besides, sir, you do not seem to remember
that, if the claim of Banks, Tressell, & Sons, is good, it relieves
my father's memory of the only imputation that now lies against
it--that of being a bankrupt."

"Ay !" he cried hoarsely, "but it makes me one--me, your uncle."

"And what reason, sir, have I to remember or to heed this relationship?"
I demanded sternly, with a glance beneath which he quailed.

"True, true, Edward, your reproach is a just one. I have not been
the friend I should have been; but--let us be friends, now, and
hereafter--we must be friends. Mrs. Clifford is very anxious that
it should be so--and--and--Edward," solemnly, "you must help me
out of this business. You must, by Heaven, you must--if you would
not have me blow my brains out!"

The man was giving true utterance to his misery--the fruit of those
pregnant fears which filled his mind.

"I would do for you, sir, whatever is proper for me to do, but can
not meddle in this unless you are prepared to make restitution,
which I should judge to be your best course."

"How can you advise me to beggar my child? This claim, if recognised,
will sweep everything. The interest alone is a fortune. I can not
think of allowing it. I would rather die!"

"This is mere madness, Mr. Clifford; your death would not lessen the
difficulty. Hear me, sir, and face the matter manfully. You must do
justice. If what I understand be true, you have most unfortunately
suffered yourself to be blinded to the dishonor of the act which you
have committed; you have appropriated wealth which did not belong
to you, and, in thus doing, you have subjected the memory of my father
to the reproach of injustice which he did not deserve. I will not
add the reproach which I might with justice add, that, in thus
wronging the father's memory, and making it cover your own improper
gains, you have suffered his son to want those necessaries of
education and sustenance, which--"

"Say no more, Edward, and it shall all be amended. Listen to me
now; but stay--close that door for a moment--there!--Now, look
you."

And, having taken these precautionary steps, the infatuated man
proceeded to admit the dishonest practices of which he had been
guilty. His object in making the confession, however, was not that
he might make reparation. Far from it. It was rather to save from
the clutch of his creditors, from the grasp of justice, his ill-gotten
possessions. I have no patience in revealing the schemes by which
this was to be effected; but, as a preliminary, I was to be made the
proprietor of one half of the sum in question, and the possessor of
his daughter's hand; in return for which I was simply to share with
him in the performance of certain secret acts, which, without
rendering his virtue any more conspicuous, would have most effectually
eradicated all of mine.

"I have listened to you, Mr. Clifford, and with great difficulty.
I now distinctly decline your proposals. Not even the bribe, so
precious in my sight, as that which you have tendered in the person
of your daughter, has power to tempt me into hesitation. I will
have nothing to do with you in this matter. Restore the property
to your creditors."

"But, Edward, you have not heard;--your share alone will be twenty
odd thousand dollars, without naming the interest!"

"Mr. Clifford, I am sorry for you. Doubly sorry that you persist
in seeing this thing in an improper light. Even were I disposed to
second your designs, it is scarcely possible, sir, that you could
be extricated. The discovery of those papers, and the extreme
probability that Hansford, the partner of the English firm of
Davis, Pierce, & Hansford, is surviving, and can be found, makes
the probabilities strongly against you. My advice to you, is,
that you make a merit of necessity;--that you endeavor to effect a
compromise before the affair has gone too far. The creditors will
make some concessions sooner than trust the uncertainties of a legal
investigation, and whether you lose or gain, a legal investigation
is what you should particularly desire to avoid. If you will adopt
this counsel, I will act for you with Banks & Tressel: and if you
will give me carte blanche, I think I can persuade them to a private
arrangement by which they will receive the principal in liquidation
of all demands. This may be considered a very fair basis for an
arrangement, since the results of the speculation could only accrue
from the business capacities of the speculator, and did not belong
to a fund which the proprietor had resolved not to appropriate,
and which must therefore, have been entirely unproductive. I do
not promise you that they will accept, but it is not improbable.
They are men of business--they need, at this moment, particularly,
an active capital; and have had too much knowledge of the doubts
and delays attending a prolonged suit in equity, not to listen to a
proposition which yields them the entire principal of their claim."

I need not repeat the arguments and entreaties by which I succeeded
in persuading my uncle to accede to the only arrangement which
could possibly have rescued him from the public exposure which was
impending; but he did consent, and, armed with his credentials, I
proceeded to the office of Banks & Tressell, without loss of time.

Though resolved, if I could effect the matter, that my uncle
should liquidate their claim to the uttermost farthing which they
required, it was my duty to make the best bargain which I could, in
reference to his unfortunate family. Accordingly, without suffering
them to know that I had carte blanche, I simply communicated to them
my wish to have the matter arranged without public investigation--that
I was persuaded from a hasty review which I had given to the case,
that there were good grounds for action;--but, at the same time,
I dwelt upon the casualties of such a course--the possibility that
the chief living witness--if he were living--might not be found,
or might not survive long enough--as he was reputed to be very
old--for the purposes of examination before the commission;--the
long delays which belonged to a litigated suit, in which the details
of a mixed foreign and domestic business of so many years was to
be raked up, reviewed and explained; and the further chances, in
the event of final success, of the property of the debtor being
so covered, concealed, or made away with, as to baffle at last all
the industry and labors of the creditor.

The merchants were men of good sense, and estimated the proverb--"a
bird in hand is worth two in the bush"--at its true value. It did
not require much argument to persuade them to receive a sum of over
forty thousand dollars, and give a full discharge to the defendant;
and I flattered myself that the matter was all satisfactorily
arranged, and had just taken a seat at my table to write to Mr.
Clifford to this effect, when, to my horror, I receive a note from
that gentleman, informing me of his resolve to join issue with
the claimants, and "maintain his RIGHTS(?) to the last moment."
He thanked me, in very cold consequential style, for my "FRIENDLY
efforts"--the words italicised, as I have now written it;--but
conduced with informing me that he had taken the opinion of older
counsel, which, though it might be less correct than mine, was,
perhaps, more full of promise for his interests.

This note justified me in calling upon the unfortunate gentleman.
It is true I had not committed him to Banks & Tressell--the
suggestions which I had made for the arrangement were all proposed
as a something which I might be able to bring about in a future
conference with him--but I was too anxious to save him from
his lamentable folly--from that miserable love of money, which,
overreaching itself in its blindness, as does every passion--was
not only about to deliver him to shame but to destitution also.

I found him in Mrs. Clifford's presence. That simple and silly woman
had evidently been made privy to the whole transaction, so far as
my arguments had been connected with it;--for ALL the truth is
not often to be got out of the man who means or has perpetrated a
dishonesty. She had been alarmed at the immense loss of money, and
consequently of importance, with which the family was threatened;
and without looking into, or being able to comprehend the facts as
they stood, she had taken around against any measure which should
involve such a sacrifice. Her influence over the weak man beside
her, was never so clear to me as now; and in learning to despise his
character more than ever, I discovered, at the same time, the true
source of many of his errors and much of his misconduct. She did
not often suffer him to reply for himself--yielded me the ultimatum
from her own lips; and condescended to assure me that she could
only ascribe the advice which I had given to her husband, to the
hostile disposition which I had always entertained for herself and
family. That I was "a wolf in sheep's clothing, SHE had long since
been able to see, though all others unhappily seemed blind."

Here she scowled at her husband, who contented himself with walking
to and fro, playing with his coatskirts, and feeling, no doubt,
a portion of the shame which his miserable bondage to this silly
woman necessarily incurred.

"Mr. Clifford has got a lawyer who can do for him what it seems
you can not," was her additional observation. "He promises to get
him to dry land, and save him without so much as wetting his shoes,
though his own blood relations, who are thought so smart, can not,
it appears, do anything."

Of course I could have nothing to say to the worthy lady, but my
expostulations were freely urged to Mr. Clifford.

"You, at least," said I, "should know the risks which you incur
by this obstinacy. Mrs. Clifford can not be expected to know; and
I now warn you, sir, that the case of Banks & Tressell is a very
strong one, very well arranged, and so admirably hung together,
in its several links of testimony, that even the absence of old
Hansford (the chief witness), should his answers never be obtained,
would scarcely impair the integrity of the evidence. In a purely
moral point of view, nothing can be more complete than it is now."

"Well, and who would it convict, Mr. Edward Clifford?" exclaimed the
inveterate lady, anticipating her husband's answer with accustomed
interference; "who would it convict, if not your own father? It
was as much his business as my husband's; and if there's any shame,
I'm sure his memory and his son will have to bear their share of
it; and this makes it so much more wonderful to me that you should
take sides against Mr. Clifford, instead of standing up in his
defence."

"I would save him, madam, if you and he would let me," I exclaimed
with some indignation. "Your reference to my father's share in this
transaction does not affect me, as it is very evident that you are
not altogether acquainted with the true part which he had in it.
He had all the risk, all the loss, all the blame--and your husband
all the profit, all the importance. He lived poor, and died so;
without a knowledge of those profitable results to his brother
of which the latter has made his own avails by leaving my father's
memory to aspersion which he did not deserve, and his son to
destitution and reproach which he merited as little. My father's
memory is liable to no reproach when every creditor knows that he
died in a state of poverty, in which his only son has ever lived.
Neither he nor I ever shared any of the pleasant fruits, for which
we are yet to be made accountable."

"And whose fault was it that you didn't get your share I'm sure Mr.
Clifford made you as handsome an offer yesterday as any man could
desire. Didn't he offer you half? But I suppose nothing short of
the whole would satisfy so ambitious a person."

"Neither the half nor the whole will serve me, madam, in such
a business. My respect for your husband and his family would, of
itself, have been sufficient to prevent my acceptance of his offer."

"But there was Julia, too, Edward!" said Mr. Clifford, approaching
me with a most insinuating smile.

"It is not yet too late," said Mrs. Clifford, unbending a little.
"Take the offer of Mr. Clifford, Edward, and be one of us; and then
this ugly business--"

"Yes, my dear Edward, even now, though I have spoken with young
Perkins about the affair, and he tells me there's nothing so much
to be afraid of, yet, for the look of the thing, I'd rather that
you should be seen acting in the business. As it's so well known
that your father had nothing, and you nothing, it'll then be easy
for the people to believe that nothing was the gain of any of us;
and--and--"

"Young Perkins may think and say what he pleases, and you are
yourself capable of judging how much respect you may pay to his
opinion. Mine, however, remains unchanged. You will have to pay
this money--nay, this necessity will not come alone. The development
of all the particulars connected with the transaction will disgrace
you for ever, and drive you from the community. Even were I to
take part with you, I do not see that it would change the aspect of
affairs. So far from your sharing with me the reputation of being
profitless in the affair, the public would more naturally suspect
that I had shared with you--now, if not before--and the whole amount
involved would not seduce me to incur this imputation."

"But my daughter--Julia--"

"Do not speak of her in this connection, I implore you, Mr. Clifford.
Let her name remain pure, uncontaminated by any considerations,
whether of mere gain or of the fraud which the gain is supposed
to involve. Freely would I give the sum in question, were it mine,
and all the wealth besides that I ever expect to acquire, to make
Julia Clifford my wife;--but I can not suffer myself, in such a
case as this, to accept her as a bribe, and to sanction crime. Nay,
I am sure that she too would be the first to object."

"And so you really refuse? Well, the world's coming to a pretty
pass. But I told Mr. Clifford, months ago, that you had quite forgot
yourself, ever since you had grown so great with the Edgertons,
and the Blakes, and Fortescues, and all them high-headed people.
But I'm sure, Mr. Edward Clifford, my daughter needn't go a-begging
to any man; and as for this business, whatever you may say against
young Perkins, I'll take his opinion of the law against that of
any other young lawyer in the country. He's as good as the best,
I'm thinking."

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