The colored children will also be glad to know, I think, that among the earliest almanacs prepared for general use in this country were those which were published for several years by this same colored man. His name was Benjamin Banneker. I have found a good and true account of this wonderful man in The Atlantic Monthly for January, 1863. I am going to give a good portion of that account in this book, because I believe every colored person in America should be acquainted with that man’s history. The account says: “Benjamin Banneker was born in Baltimore County, Maryland, near the village of Ellicott’s Mills, in the year 1732. There was not a drop of white man’s blood in his veins. His father was born in Africa, and his mother’s parents were both natives of Africa. What genius he had, then, must be credited to that race. When he was approaching manhood he went, in the intervals of toil, to an obscure and remote country school. At this school Benjamin acquired a knowledge of reading and writing, and advanced in arithmetic as far as ‘Double position.’ Beyond these rudiments he was his own teacher. Young Banneker had no books at all, but in the midst of labor for a living he so improved upon what he had gained in arithmetic that his intelligence became a matter of general observation. He was such an acute observer of the natural world and had so diligently observed the signs of the times in society that it is very doubtful whether at forty years of age this African had his superior in Maryland. “Perhaps the first wonder amongst his comparatively illiterate neighbors was excited, when, about the thirtieth year of his age, Benjamin made a clock. It is probable that this was the first clock of which every portion was made in America; it is certain that it was purely his own invention as if none had ever been made before. He had seen a watch, but never a clock, such an article not being within fifty miles of him. He used the watch as a model for his clock. He was a long time at work on the clock,--his chief difficulty, as he used often to relate, being to make the hour, minute, and second hands correspond in their motion. But at last the work was completed, and raised the admiration for Banneker to quite a high pitch among his few neighbors.