Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/185



has not frequently happened in these times that a poet has dated a poem from a prison cell, or dedicated a book of poems to the judge of a police court. Mr. Edward Smythe Jones, however, has done this, and there is an interesting story by way of explanation. From the poem alluded to it seems that Mr. Jones in his over-mastering desire to drink at the Harvard fountain of learning tramped out of the Southland up to Cambridge. Arriving travel-worn, friendless, moneyless, hungry, he was preparing to bivouac on the Harvard campus his first night in the University city,