Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/19

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THE STORY OF THE JUBILEE SINGERS.



CHAPTER I.

THE YEAR OF JUBILEE.


The story of the Jubilee Singers seems almost as little like a chapter from real life as the legend of the daring Argonauts who sailed with Jason on that famous voyage after the Golden Fleece. It is the story of a little company of emancipated slaves who set out to secure, by their singing, the fabulous sum of $20,000 for the impoverished school in which they were students. The world was as unknown to these untravelled freed people as were the countries through which the Argonauts had to pass; the social prejudices that confronted them were as terrible to meet as fire-breathing bulls or the warriors that sprang from the land sown with dragons' teeth; and no seas