The publishers of this book have spared neither pains nor expense in trying to make it as nearly perfect as a book of this kind can be. The typographical appearance and the illustrations will speak for themselves. We consider ourselves fortunate in having been able to secure the services of the Rev. Dr. Silas X. Floyd as the author of this volume. Mr. Floyd’s life work, aside from his literary training, has made him the ideal man to speak to the colored boys and girls of the South. Soon after graduating from Atlanta University in 1891, Mr. Floyd became Principal of a Public School at Augusta, Ga., and remained in that city for five years consecutively as a teacher. In June, 1896, he was called from the school-room into the Sunday-school work, having been appointed by the International Sunday School Convention as one of its Field Workers throughout the South. He continued in this work for three years, retiring from it to become Pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church, Augusta, Ga., one of the largest churches in the South. After a year and a half in the pastorate, he returned to the Sunday-school work, becoming Sunday-school Missionary for Georgia and Alabama under appointment of the American Baptist Publication Society. Mr. Floyd’s work, as the record shows, has been conspicuously for and in behalf of the children, and he is known far and wide as a competent writer and speaker on topics concerning young people. He has contributed to the Sunday School Times, the International Evangel, the New York Independent, The World’s Work, Lippincott’s Magazine, and many other journals and periodicals. He is the author of a volume of sermons published by the American Baptist Publication Society, and listed in their catalogue as among their standard works, and is also the author of the Life of the leading colored Baptist preacher in America, published by the National Baptist Publishing Board. From the beginning of the Voice of the Negro, Mr. Floyd has had charge of the Wayside Department as Editor, and his work as a humorist and writer of negro dialect is known to many through that medium. In 1894, Atlanta University, his alma mater, conferred upon Mr. Floyd the degree of Master of Arts, and in 1902, Morris Brown College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. CONTENTS