As the _avants-courrieres_ [Transcriber's Note: avants-courriers] in art of those of their race, whom, let us hope, a fast-approaching day of better opportunities shall make plentiful enough; holding as they do their torches in the remaining darkness, to light the pathway of those that shall follow them into the bright, the delightful realms of the operatic Muse,--theirs is therefore a beneficent, a noble mission, the continuance of which promises the happiest results for all concerned. XIX. THE FAMOUS JUBILEE SINGERS OF FISK UNIVERSITY. "The air he chose was wild and sad:... Now one shrill voice the notes prolong; Now a wild chorus swells the song. Oft have I listened and stood still As it came softened up the hill." SIR WALTER SCOTT. "If, in brief, we might give a faint idea of what it is utterly impossible to depict, we would adopt three words,--_soft, sweet, simple_." _"The Jubilee Singers:" London Rock._ The dark cloud of human slavery, which for over two hundred weary years had hung, incubus-like, over the American nation, had happily passed away. The bright sunshine of emancipation's glorious day shone over a race at last providentially rescued from the worst fate recorded in all the world's dark history. Up out of the house of bondage, where had reigned the most terrible wrongs, where had been stifled the higher aspirations of manhood, where genius had been crushed, nay, more, where attempts had been made to annihilate even all human instincts,--from this accursing region, this charnel-house of human woe, came the latter-day children of Israel, the American freedmen. How much like the ancient story was their history! The American nation, Pharaoh-like, had long and steadily refused to obey the voice of Him who said, between every returning plague, "Let my people go;" and, after long waiting, he sent the avenging scourge of civil strife to _compel_ obedience. The great war of the Rebellion (it should be called the war of retribution), with its stream of human blood, became the Red Sea through which these long-suffering ones, with aching, trembling limbs, with hearts possessed half with fear and half with hope hitherto so long deferred, passed into the "promised land" of blessed liberty. Slavery, then, ended, the first duty was to repair as far as possible its immense devastations made upon the minds of those who had so long been its victims. The freedmen were to be educated, and fitted for the enjoyment of their new positions.