Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/91

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Rochdale, but his family subscribed £10 to furnish a room to bear his name; and he afterwards wrote a letter commending their mission as "one deserving of all support," which went the rounds of the papers and was of much help to them. At Bolton, J. P. Barlow, Esq., gave £50 for five rooms, one of them to be named after President Charles G. Finney, of Oberlin College, in remembrance of his evangelistic labours during a great revival in that town years before.

At Manchester they were fortunate in enlisting the services of Mr. Richard Johnson, the apostle of ragged schools. No town was ever before more thoroughly ploughed with advertising and sown with information, and such work never yielded a better harvest. The proceeds of the four concerts in the Free-Trade Large Hall amounted to over £1,200. This sum was further swollen by the sale of the books giving the history of their first American campaign, the profit on these sales in one evening being £40. Three concerts followed in the Philharmonic Hall at Liverpool, with large receipts, the first one yielding £325. The total receipts of the month of January amounted to £3,800.

But this success was achieved at the cost of an appalling amount of work. Requests for concerts flowed in from all parts of the kingdom. It was impossible to comply with half of them, and the investigation involved in deciding where to go was an exhausting strain on time and strength. A vast amount of correspondence was unavoidable in replying to invitations to breakfasts, dinners, and teas,