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.