 | Revels of Fancy |  |
Dear Mr. Johnson Vandyne:
You have asked me to look over your poems from time to time. I have done so with pleasure, accepting many, and have felt that they possessed merit, and that the development of your poetic gift should be in every way encouraged, as there needs some pen to voice thoughts and sentiments of your own people and your verse catches the sentiment of the times.
I advised you to study the best models of verse, to seek to do better and more perfect work, for “every man is a debtor to his profession.” How well you have tried to follow this advice, your beautiful and sympathetic poem on Touissant L'Ouverture shows. I have read that poem with especial delight as a piece of literary work, and have been touched that you seem to have caught the spirit of the Liberator and Martyr. The work of your methods and thoughts as shown in this poem, make you worthy of every encouragement, and I am glad that you are about to publish your poems in book form, and I wish, as every one who loves progress will, that the book may receive merited recognition and be most successful.
If you can produce such pieces to-day, you can do much perfect work in the future, and there are many leaders like Touissant whose spirit you may well interpret.
| Revels of Fancy | |