The Author is one of a race that has given scarcely anything of
literature to the world. His modest tender of some Christmas verses to
me led to an inquiry which revealed his story of unpretentious but
earnest and conscientious toil. He is wholly self-taught in English
literature and composition. The obstacles which he has surmounted were
undreamed of by Burns and other sons of song who struggled up from
poverty, obscurity, and ignorance to glory.
Joseph Seamon Cotter was born in Nelson County, Kentucky, in 1861, but
has spent practically all his life in Louisville. He had the scantiest
opportunity for schooling in childhood, though he could read before he
was four years old. He was put to work early, and from his eighth to his
twenty-fourth year earned his living by the roughest and hardest labor,
first in a brick yard, then in a distillery, and finally as a teamster.
At twenty-two his scholarship was so limited that when he entered the
first one of Louisville's night schools for colored pupils he had to
begin in the primary department. His industry and capacity were so great
that at the end of two sessions of five months each he began to teach.
He has persevered in his calling, educating himself while at work, and
is now Principal of the Tenth Ward Colored School, at Thirteenth and
Green streets. The man whose advice and encouragement at the beginning
chiefly enabled him to accomplish this was Prof. W. T. Peyton, a
well-known colored educator of this city, whom he regards as his
greatest benefactor.--THOMAS G. WATKINS, _Financial Editor Louisville
Courier-Journal_.