Introduction
Nearly twenty years ago there came to my door a Negro of fine standing in the community, with the manuscript of a play which he desired me to read. That manuscript, whatever its faults, had the fundamental quality of sincerity—a quality that is not always present in work that often finds its way to a far wider audience.
The writer of that play was Joseph S. Cotter, and now in this volume, written by Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., his son, there is displayed the talent for verse-writing that I found in the father; a talent which has, however, in this instance, been hampered by sad ill health. For the verses of this volume were nearly all written on a sick bed, by a boy whose twenty-two years have been far from filled with the ineffable boon of strong health.
But to the public the interest these verses will have, apart from their merit and the gallant spirit in which they are written, lies in this: The Negro race, which has always been able to ease its heart with melody and folk-song, is beginning to look upon words also as a medium of giving expression to its deeper and finer emotions. Paul Lawrence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson are perhaps the most distinguished of those who have entered the field of poetry, but perhaps if health is re-
