Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/115

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their money was all gone, she would leave school and go to work until some more was saved up, and she could return to her studies. She paid for her tuition by service in Mr. White's family out of school hours, and took in washing during vacations.

From childhood she had a fine voice, and delighted in singing. But her mother, with judgment as rare as it was wise, and with what seems now almost like prophetic foresight, steadily refused to allow her to sing in choirs, or on other occasions where there would be danger of overstraining her voice, or to let her take lessons in vocal culture from teachers who might do it harm. "Save your voice and you may have a chance to do some good with it some day," she would say. But it surely had not entered into that unlettered freedwoman's heart to conceive how much good it was to do to the thousands whom it has stirred with Christian song on both sides of the sea.

Jennie was one of the girls chosen by Mr. White to sing a solo at his first concert in Nashville, and she has been with the Jubilee Singers in all their work since they first left home in 1871.

Julia Jackson was born a slave in St. Louis, but in what year she does not know, as their master kept their ages. Her parents belonged to different owners, but before marriage they bargained with their masters for their time, secretly agreeing to save all they could and buy their freedom as soon as possible. Her mother's master lived out of town and came in daily to his business. She agreed to