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54 pp. (8vo), original textured red cloth, lettered in gilt. First Edition.

Inscribed in pencil on front end-paper, “To the distinguished Mr. John Gammeter, one of Nature’s noblemen. Elliott B. Henderson. July 17th, 1918”, with Gammeter printed signature, Akron, Ohio, on front pastedown. A little-known African-American poet of the Dunbar era, Henderson (1877-1944) was born in Ohio, where he lived throughout his life, his grandfather having come north from Virginia (via the Underground Railroad?) long before the Civil War. He published eight other volumes of poems between 1904 and 1915, and several in later life, most of these being in Black dialect. John Gammeter, to whom this volume is inscribed, was an engineer and aviator of Swiss-German descent who headed the experimental division of the Goodrich Rubber Company, producing over 300 inventions, including a dirigible balloon used by the US Navy in World War I, and – his least celebrated but most lucrative - an improved latex condom.