INTRODUCTION.
The writer of the following pages is a poor colored man
of this city, engaged in the humble, yet honorable and useful
occupation of a barber. His time is constantly taken up
in his business, and he writes in such intervals of leisure as
he is able to realize. He is uneducated; not entirely, but
substantially; his genius is native and uncultivated, and yet
his verse possesses much of the finish of experienced authorship;
there is the “ring of the true metal” in it. He feels
the “Divine spark” within him, and longs for the means and
opportunity to call in the aid of intellectual culture, that he
may be enabled to give it form and shape, and clothe it in
befitting language. This volume is presented to the public
with this view, and in the hope that it may find a favorable
reception with our people, and “put money in the purse” of
the writer, that he may be able to cultivate, improve, and
fully develop the talent which God hath given him.
Buffalo, May, 1853.
