He has been repeatedly honored, too, by the people of his own state. He was twice appointed commissioner at Lynchburg for the Petersburg Industrial Association. He is Recording Steward of the Jackson Street M. E. Church and Superintendent of the Sunday-School. The business tact of our subject was fully recognized in his election as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Lynchburg Real Estate Loan and Trust Company.
Mr. Penn is a member of the Colored M. E. Church, and a man of good moral character. He respects himself, and is respected by his friends and acquaintances.
VI. HIS PRESENT WORK.
The work for which this introduction is prepared will be of no little benefit to the race. It will serve as a cyclopaedia of information on a power which has exerted an untold influence on our progress. "Afro-American Journalism and its editors" must of necessity cover a broad field. Its conception is grand, and the labor and culture essential to its accomplishment are great and varied. It may be thought by some that Mr. Penn is too young for the undertaking. The fallacy of such an idea is apparent from the fact, that the world's literature is greatly indebted to young men and women.
Thomas Sackville wrote, at the age of twenty-three, "A Mirror for Magistrates," and "Rare Ben Johnson," at the same age, produced "Every Man in his Humor." "The Fall of Robespierre" was finished by Samuel Taylor Coleridge before he was twenty-two, and "Hours of Idleness" was completed by Lord Byron, at the age of twenty. Amelie Rives conceived and brought forth "The Quick and the Dead," before she was twenty-one, and Phillis Wheatley issued a volume of poems before she was twenty. "Pleasures of Hope," "Essay on Criticism," "As a Man and Not a Man," were produced, respectively, by Thomas Campbell, Alexander Pope, and A. A. Whitman, when each was about twenty. How remarkable it is that Euripides penned a laudable tragedy and William Cullen Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis," when they were each eighteen; that Aristophanes, at the age of seventeen, exhibited his first comedy; and that Robert Burns and Hannah More produced, respectively, "Handsome Nell" and "The Search after Happiness," when each was about sixteen.
