Fred Cole was youngest child of John Conger Cole and Mary Arville Osborn and arrived as they both turned forty. Fred brought with him a series of illnesses which left him fragile and small, a condition coupled with the fact of the mellowed adulthood of his parents and the protection of his older siblings that shaped the career of his life into that of poet and educator. He was a man well-read and of quick wit, a 1896 graduate of Chesterton High School and of DePauw University, both in Indiana. For many years he was known as "Professor Cole" during his years as the Public Schools Superintendent in Porter County, Indiana. Much of his poetry and many of his songs were only published in the local newspapers of the day, dying lonely deaths in the back pages next to columns of ads for ointments and farm equipment. Soon after his death in 1959, his surviving, written works were collected and edited for eventual publication. This is that collection.