I. Windslow Ayer - "The Great North Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details"

Various - "The Maya Chronicles"

John Fiske - "The War of Independence"

Bernard Mandeville - "An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War"

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.

Ernest Linwood

r >> r, The Inner Life of the Author >> Ernest Linwood



ERNEST LINWOOD;

OR,

THE INNER LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

BY MRS. CAROLINE LEE HENTZ.


AUTHOR OF "LINDA; OR, THE YOUNG PILOT OF THE BELLE CREOLE," "THE
BANISHED SON," "COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE; OR, THE JOYS AND SORROWS OF
AMERICAN LIFE," "THE PLANTER'S NORTHERN BRIDE; OR, SCENES IN MRS. HENTZ
CHILDHOOD," "LOVE AFTER MARRIAGE," "MARCUS WARLAND; OR, THE LONG MOSS
SPRING," "EOLINE; OR, MAGNOLIA VALE; OR, THE HEIRESS OF GLENMORE,"
"HELEN AND ARTHUR; OR, MISS THUSA'S SPINNING-WHEEL," "RENA; OR, THE SNOW
BIRD," "THE LOST DAUGHTER," "ROBERT GRAHAM;" A SEQUEL TO "LINDA," ETC.


PHILADELPHIA:
T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;
306 CHESTNUT STREET.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by T. B.
PETERSON & BROTHERS

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.


* * * * *

"Thou hast called me thine angel in moments of bliss,
Still thine angel I'll prove mid the horrors of this.
Through the furnace unshrinking thy steps I'll pursue,
And shield thee, and save thee, and perish there too."

* * * * *




ERNEST LINWOOD.




CHAPTER I.


With an incident of my childhood I will commence the record of my life.
It stands out in bold prominence, rugged and bleak, through the haze of
memory.

I was only twelve years old. He might have spoken less harshly. He might
have remembered and pitied my youth and sensitiveness, that tall,
powerful, hitherto kind man,--my preceptor, and, as I believed, my
friend. Listen to what he did say, in the presence of the whole school
of boys, as well as girls, assembled on that day to hear the weekly
exercises read, written on subjects which the master had given us the
previous week.

One by one, we were called up to the platform, where he sat enthroned in
all the majesty of the Olympian king-god. One by one, the manuscripts
were read by their youthful authors,--the criticisms uttered, which
marked them with honor or shame,--gliding figures passed each other,
going and returning, while a hasty exchange of glances, betrayed the
flash of triumph, or the gloom of disappointment.

"Gabriella Lynn!" The name sounded like thunder in my ears. I rose,
trembling, blushing, feeling as if every pair of eyes in the hall were
burning like redhot balls on my face. I tried to move, but my feet were
glued to the floor.

"Gabriella Lynn!"

The tone was louder, more commanding, and I dared not resist the
mandate. The greater fear conquered the less. With a desperate effort I
walked, or rather rushed, up the steps, the paper fluttering in my hand,
as if blown upon by a strong wind.

"A little less haste would be more decorous, Miss."

The shadow of a pair of beetling brows rolled darkly over me. Had I
stood beneath an overhanging cliff, with the ocean waves dashing at my
feet, I could not have felt more awe or dread. A mist settled on my
eyes.

"Read,"--cried the master, waving his ferula with a commanding
gesture,--"our time is precious."

I opened my lips, but no sound issued from my paralyzed tongue. With a
feeling of horror, which the intensely diffident can understand, and
only they, I turned and was about to fly back to my seat, when a large,
strong hand pressed its weight upon my shoulder, and arrested my flight.

"Stay where you are," exclaimed Mr. Regulus. "Have I not lectured you a
hundred times on this preposterous shame-facedness of yours? Am I a
Draco, with laws written in blood, a tyrant, scourging with an iron rod,
that you thus shrink and tremble before me? Read, or suffer the penalty
due to disobedience and waywardness."

Thus threatened, I commenced in a husky, faltering voice the reading of
lines which, till that moment, I had believed glowing with the
inspiration of genius. Now, how flat and commonplace they seemed! It was
the first time I had ever ventured to reveal to others the talent hidden
with all a miser's vigilance in my bosom casket. I had lisped in
rhyme,--I had improvised in rhyme,--I had dreamed in poetry, when the
moon and stars were looking down on me with benignant lustre;--I had
_thought_ poetry at the sunset hour, amid twilight shadows and midnight
darkness. I had scribbled it at early morn in my own little room, at
noonday recess at my solitary desk; but no human being, save my mother,
knew of the young dream-girl's poetic raptures.

One of those irresistible promptings of the spirit which all have felt,
and to which many have yielded, induced me at this era to break loose
from my shell and come forth, as I imagined, a beautiful and brilliant
butterfly, soaring up above the gaze of my astonished and admiring
companions. Yes; with all my diffidence I anticipated a scene of
triumph, a dramatic scene, which would terminate perhaps in a crown of
laurel, or a public ovation.

Lowly self-estimation is by no means a constant accompaniment of
diffidence. The consciousness of possessing great powers and deep
sensibility often creates bashfulness. It is their veil and guard while
maturing and strengthening. It is the flower-sheath, that folds the
corolla, till prepared to encounter the sun's burning rays.

"Read!"

I did read,--one stanza. I could not go on though the scaffold were the
doom of my silence.

"What foolery is this! Give it to me."

The paper was pulled from my clinging fingers. Clearing his throat with
a loud and prolonged hem,--then giving a flourish of his ruler on the
desk, he read, in a tone of withering derision, the warm breathings of a
child's heart and soul, struggling after immortality,--the spirit and
trembling utterance of long cherished, long imprisoned yearnings.

Now, when after years of reflection I look back on that
never-to-be-forgotten moment, I can form a true estimate of the poem
subjected to that fiery ordeal, I wonder the paper did not scorch and
shrivel up like a burning scroll. It did not deserve ridicule. The
thoughts were fresh and glowing, the measure correct, the versification
melodious. It was the genuine offspring of a young imagination, urged by
the "strong necessity" of giving utterance to its bright idealities, the
sighings of a heart looking beyond its lowly and lonely destiny. Ah! Mr.
Regulus, you were cruel then.

Methinks I see him,--hear him now, weighing in the iron scales of
criticism every springing, winged idea, cutting and slashing the words
till it seemed to me they dropped blood,--then glancing from me to the
living rows of benches with such a cold, sarcastic smile.

"What a barbarous, unfeeling monster!" perhaps I hear some one exclaim.

No, he was not. He could be very kind and indulgent. He had been kind
and generous to me. He gave me my tuition, and had taken unwearied pains
with my lessons. He could forgive great offences, but had no toleration
for little follies. He really thought it a sinful waste of time to write
poetry in school. He had given me a subject for composition, a useful,
practical one, but not at all to my taste, and I had ventured to
disregard it. I had jumped over the rock, and climbed up to the flowers
that grew above it. He was a thorough mathematician, a celebrated
grammarian, a renowned geographer and linguist, but I then thought he
had no more ear for poetry or music, no more eye for painting,--the
painting of God, or man,--than the stalled ox, or the Greenland seal. I
did him injustice, and he was unjust to me. I had not intended to slight
or scorn the selection he had made, but I could not write upon it,--I
could not help my thoughts flowing into rhyme.

Can the stream help gliding and rippling through its flowery margins?
Can the bird help singing and warbling upward into the deep blue sky,
sending down a silver shower of melody as it flies?

Perhaps some may think I am swelling small things into great; but
incidents and actions are to be judged by their results, by their
influence in the formation of character, and the hues they reflect on
futurity. Had I received encouragement instead of rebuke, praise instead
of ridicule,--had he taken me by the hand and spoken some such kindly
words as these:--

"This is very well for a little girl like you. Lift up that downcast
face, nor blush and tremble, as if detected in a guilty act. You must
not spend too much time in the reveries of imagination, for this is a
working-day world, my child. Even the birds have to build their nests,
and the coral insect is a mighty laborer. The gift of song is sweet, and
may be made an instrument of the Creator's glory. The first notes of the
lark are feeble, compared to his heaven-high strains. The fainter dawn
precedes the risen day."

Oh! had he addressed me in indulgent words as these, who knows but that,
like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who knows but
that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have opened to
admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the
priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered
burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and
found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I
might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though
circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom
with unquenchable fire.

I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words
I have written.

"Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name?
Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that
this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that
opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to
secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over
the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and
glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not
understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!"

Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into
slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron
wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think _I_ can, by the
experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and
panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his
left hand, pointing _at_ it with the forefinger of his right.

"He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me
boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will
die sooner. He may insult _my_ poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her
sorrows too."

I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing _her_
name associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the
manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the
elephant.

"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you
try that again. You had better keep quiet."

A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with
secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.

I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong
grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps
through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or
left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight
and open air.

"Come back, this moment!"

The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone,
threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with
constantly accelerating speed.

"Go back,--never!"

I said this to myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came
coolly and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning
cheeks of the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I
slackened my steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of
the academy gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and
above them the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen,
seemed writing on the azure page of heaven.

My home,--the little cottage in the woods, was one mile distant. There
was a by-path, a foot-path, as it was called, which cut the woods in a
diagonal line, and which had been trodden hard and smooth by the feet of
the children. Even at mid-day there was twilight in that solitary path,
and when the shadows deepened and lengthened on the plain, they
concentrated into gloominess there. The moment I turned into that path,
I was supreme. It was _mine_. The public road, the thoroughfare leading
through the heart of the town, belonged to the world. I was obliged to
walk there like other people, with mincing steps, and bonnet tied primly
under the chin, according to the rule and plummet line of school-girl
propriety. But in my own little by-path, I could do just as I pleased. I
could run with my bonnet swinging in my hand, and my hair floating like
the wild vine of the woods. I could throw myself down on the grass at
the foot of the great trees, and looking up into the deep, distant sky,
indulge my own wondrous imaginings.

I did so now. I cast myself panting on the turf, and turning my face
downward instead of upward, clasped my hands over it, and the hot tears
gushed in scalding streams through my fingers, till the pillow of earth
was all wet as with a shower.

Oh, they did me good, those fast-gushing tears! There was comfort, there
was luxury in them. Bless God for tears! How they cool the dry and
sultry heart! How they refresh the fainting virtues! How they revive the
dying affections!

The image of my pale sweet, gentle mother rose softly through the
falling drops. A rainbow seemed to crown her with its seven-fold beams.

Dear mother!--would she will me to go back where the giant pen dipped
its glittering nib into the deep blue ether?




CHAPTER II.


"Get up, Gabriella,--you must not lie here on the damp ground. Get
up,--it is almost night. What _will_ your mother say? what _will_ she
think has become of you?"

I started up, bewildered and alarmed, passing my hands dreamily over my
swollen eyelids. Heavy shadows hung over the woods. Night was indeed
approaching. I had fallen into a deep sleep, and knew it not.

It was Richard Clyde who awakened me. His schoolmaster called him Dick,
but I thought it sounded vulgar, and he was always Richard to me. A boy
of fifteen, the hardest student in the academy, and, next to my mother
and Peggy, the best friend I had in the world. I had no brother, and
many a time had he acted a brother's part, when I had needed a manly
champion. Yet my mother had enjoined on me such strict reserve in my
intercourse with the boy pupils, and my disposition was so shy, our
acquaintance had never approached familiarity.

"I did not mean to shake you so hard," said he, stepping back a few
paces as he spoke, "but I never knew any one sleep so like a log before.
I feared for a moment that you were dead."

"It would not be much matter if I were," I answered, hardly knowing what
I said, for a dull weight pressed on my brain, and despondency had
succeeded excitement.

"Oh, Gabriella! is it not wicked to say that?"

"If you had been treated as badly as I have, you would feel like saying
it too."

"Yes!" he exclaimed, energetically, "you have been treated badly,
shamefully, and I told the master so to his face."

"You! You did not, Richard. You only thought so. You would not have told
him so for all the world."

"But I did, though! As soon as you ran out of school, it seemed as if he
made but one step to the door, and his face looked as black as night. I
thought if he overtook you, he might,--I did not know what he would do,
he was so angry. I sat near the door, and I jumped right up and faced
him on the threshold. 'Don't, sir, don't! I cried; she is a little girl,
and you a great strong man.'

"'What is that to you, sirrah?' he exclaimed, and the forked lightning
ran out of his eye right down my backbone. It aches yet, Gabriella.

"'It is a great deal, Sir,' I answered, as bold as a lion. 'You have
treated her cruelly enough already. It would be cowardly to pursue
her.'"

"Oh, Richard! how dared you say that? Did he not strike you?"

"He lifted his hand; but instead of flinching, I made myself as tall as
I could, and looked at him right steadfastly. You do not know how pale
he looked, when I stopped him on the threshold. His very lips turned
white--I declare there is something grand in a great passion. It makes
one look somehow so different from common folks. Well, now, as soon as
he raised his hand to strike me, a red flush shot into his face, like
the blaze of an inward fire. It was shame,--anger made him white--but
shame turned him as red as blood. His arm dropped down to his
side,--then he laid his hand on the top of his head,--'Stay after
school,' said he, 'I must talk with you.'"

"And did you?" I asked, hanging with breathless interest on his words.

"Yes; I have just left him."

"He has not expelled you, Richard?"

"No; but he says I must ask his pardon before the whole school
to-morrow. It amounts to the same thing. I will never do it."

"I am so sorry this has happened," said I. "Oh! that I had never written
that foolish, foolish poetry. It has done so much mischief."

"You are not to blame, Gabriella. He had no business to laugh at it; it
was beautiful--all the boys say so. I have no doubt you will be a great
poetess one of these days. He ought to have been proud of it, instead of
making fun of you. It was so mean."

"But you must go back to school, Richard. You are the best scholar. The
master is proud of you, and will not give you up. I would not have it
said that _I_ was the cause of your leaving, for twice your weight in
solid gold."

"Would you not despise me if I asked pardon, when I have done no wrong;
to appear ashamed of what I glory in; to act the part of a coward, after
publicly proclaiming _him_ to be one?"

"It is hard," said I, "but--"

We were walking homeward all the while we were talking, and at every
step my spirits sank lower and lower. How different every thing seemed
now, from what it did an hour ago. True, I had been treated with
harshness, but I had no right to rebel as I had done. Had I kissed the
rod, it would have lost its sting,--had I borne the smart with patience
and gentleness, my companions would have sympathized with and pitied me;
it would not have been known beyond the walls of the academy. But now,
it would be blazoned through the whole town. The expulsion of so
distinguished a scholar as Richard Clyde would be the nine days' gossip,
the village wonder. And I should be pointed out as the presumptuous
child, whose disappointed vanity, irascibility, and passion had created
rebellion and strife in a hitherto peaceful seminary. I, the recipient
of the master's favors, an ingrate and a wretch! My mother would know
this--my gentle, pale-faced mother.

Our little cottage was now visible, with its low walls of grayish white,
and vine-encircled windows.

"Richard," said I, walking as slowly as possible, though it was growing
darker every moment, "I feel very unhappy. I will go and see the master
in the morning and ask him to punish me for both. I will humble myself
for your sake, for you have been my champion, and I never will forget it
as long as I live. I was wrong to rush out of school as I did,--wrong to
tear the paper from his hands,--and I am willing to tell him so now. It
shall all be right yet, Richard,--indeed it shall."

"You shall not humble yourself for me, Gabriella; I like a girl of
spirit."

We had now reached the little gate that opened into our own green yard.
I could see my mother looking from the window for her truant child. My
heart began to palpitate, for no Catholic ever made more faithful
confessions to his absolving priest, than I to my only parent. Were I
capable of concealing any thing from her, I should have thought myself
false and deceitful. With feelings of love and reverence kindred to
those with which I regarded my Heavenly Father, I looked up to her, the
incarnate angel of my life. This expression has been so often used it
does not seem to mean much; but when I say it, I mean all the filial
heart is capable of feeling. I was poor in fortune, but in her goodness
rich. I was a lonely child, but sad and pensive as she was, she was a
fountain of social joy to me. Then, she was so beautiful--so very, very
lovely!

I caught the light of her pensive smile through the dimness of the hour.
She was so accustomed to my roaming in the woods, she had suffered no
alarm.

"If my mother thinks it right, you will not object to my going to see
Mr. Regulus," said I, as Richard lifted the gate-latch for me to enter.

"For yourself, no; but not for me. I can take care of myself,
Gabriella."

He spoke proudly. He did not quite come up to my childish idea of a boy
hero, but I admired his self-reliance and bravery. I did not want him to
despise me or my lack of spirit. I began to waver in my good resolution.

My mother called me, in that soft, gentle tone, so full of music and of
love.

In ten minutes I had told her all.




CHAPTER III.


If I thought any language of mine could do justice to her character, I
would try to describe my mother. Were I to _speak_ of her, my voice
would choke at the mention of her name. As I write, a mist gathers over
my eyes. Grief for the loss of such a being is immortal, as the love of
which it is born.

I have said that we were poor,--but ours was not abject poverty,
hereditary poverty,--though _I_ had never known affluence, or even that
sufficiency which casts out the fear of want. I knew that my mother was
the child of wealth, and that she had been nurtured in elegance and
splendor. I inherited from her the most fastidious tastes, without the
means of gratifying them. I felt that I had a right to be wealthy, and
that misfortune alone had made my mother poor, had made her an alien
from her kindred and the scenes of her nativity. I felt a strange pride
in this conviction. Indeed there was a singular union of pride and
diffidence in my character, that kept me aloof from my young companions,
and closed up the avenues to the social joys of childhood.

My mother thought a school life would counteract the influence of her
own solitary habits and example. She did not wish me to be a hermit
child, and for this reason accepted the offer Mr. Regulus made through
the minister to become a pupil in the academy. She might have sent me to
the free schools in the neighborhood, but she did not wish me to form
associations incompatible with the refinement she had so carefully
cultivated in me. She might have continued to teach me at home, for she
was mistress of every accomplishment, but she thought the discipline of
an institution like this would give tone and firmness to my poetic and
dreaming mind. She wanted me to become practical,--she wanted to see the
bark growing and hardening over the exposed and delicate fibres. She
anticipated for me the cold winds and beating rains of an adverse
destiny. I knew she did, though she had never told me so in words. I
read it in the anxious, wistful, prophetic expression of her soft, deep
black eyes, whenever they rested on me. Those beautiful, mysterious
eyes!

There was a mystery about her that gave power to her excellence and
beauty. Through the twilight shades of her sorrowful loneliness, I could
trace only the dim outline of her past life. I was fatherless,--and
annihilation, as well as death, seemed the doom of him who had given me
being. I was forbidden to mention his name. No similitude of his
features, no token of his existence, cherished by love and hallowed by
reverence, invested him with the immortality of memory. It was as if he
had never been.

Thus mantled in mystery, his image assumed a sublimity and grandeur in
my imagination, dark and oppressive as night. I would sit and ponder
over his mystic attributes, till he seemed like those gods of mythology,
who, veiling their divinity in clouds, came down and wooed the daughters
of men. A being so lovely and good as my mother would never have loved a
common mortal. Perhaps he was some royal exile, who had found her in his
wanderings a beauteous flower, but dared not transplant her to the
garden of kings.

My mother little thought, when I sat in my simple calico dress, my
school-book open on my knees, conning my daily lessons, or seeming so to
do, what wild, absurd ideas were revelling in my brain. She little
thought how high the "aspiring blood" of mine mounted in that lowly,
woodland cottage.

I told her the history of my humiliation, passion, and flight,--of
Richard Clyde's brave defence and undaunted resolution,--of my sorrow on
his account,--of my shame and indignation on my own.

"My poor Gabriella!"

"You are not angry with me, my mother?"

"Angry! No, my child, it was a hard trial,--very hard for one so young.
I did not think Mr. Regulus capable of so much unkindness. He has
cancelled this day a debt of gratitude."

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