PREFACE. This Book comes to the public from one who has the care of a large pastorate, busy studying and praying in order to find how he may best serve his flock it comes to a people who are not all prepared, to appreciate a work oE this kind from one of their own race. The Negro, it seems to the author, is not yet ready to encourage its men of a historical and literary turn of mind-not even those who are in advance of the common people. I have often thought if 1 was anything else , but of the race I am, I might, perhaps, be something and be able to do and also make somebody else something, but as it is, I am doubtful. Yet I feel encouraged enough not to despair, but to ush forward under Gods help with hope to become something and to yet make my people something. It is universally conceded that my people have accomplished what no other race in the world ever accomplished in so short a time, and notwithstanding I am not so flushed with what we have accomplished to forget the fact that we have not as yet more than got our foot on the bottom round of the ladder, whose top leads to a that a race must possess to be classed with the races who passed through centuries to lay their hands on the top round. Generations must come and go before this can be done. It took five hundred years to make a Jew in the days of Abraham, eight hundred years to make a Roman in Ciceros time, land one thousand years to make an Englishman. We have done well for the time we have had, but not well enough. To stop and take time too argue about what we have done, is like a little boy boasting of his manly acts before he has hardly commenced in life, so we may by so doing spoil all we have done. Yet we may, as we go, onspeak of what we have done for our own encouragement and inspiration of those who are to follow in our footprints. The Black Side will be one of the factors in solving the great Negro problem. These beautiful, cultured faces, either in the schooI of experience or letters, will do much in advancing a step farther in findink the answer in the great problem. This book represents men, young and old, who have come to the front in life with everything to discourage them, no lucrative position to inspire them, nothing to encourage,save the natural ability being an impetus to their successiul business tact which the God of daturt has abundantly crowned the Negro with. It is hoped that this book will do much when it is read to give a great impetus, to the younger ones. This wish is the inmost throbbing of the Authors life. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven, says the wise King of,Israel. He further says I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised i it. Recognizing the truth of these divine declarations, this is evidently the time and the season for so much of the Hamitic races includes the Negro, to take their place among the literary men of the present age, and rapidly are they doing so. Year after year additions to our libraries are made by the productions of this cold-shouldered and undervalued race. A few years ago it was argued by the contemners of the Negro that he was not only degraded,non-intellectual, but created an inferior race by that God who is no re- specter of persons, and as such was destitute of a knowedge of governmental institutions, and could not compre- hend the subtilties of any system of philosophy. Another charge that has repeatedly been alleged, was that he either had no history or had been too incompetent to preserve it.....