In Memoriam.
PROFESSOR GEORGE L. WHITE.
Twenty-four years ago a choir of colored singers, young men and women, went forth from Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., and introduced a peculiar variety of songs and music, which they and their successors have carried with éclat well-nigh round the world. They not only awoke the enthusiasm of vast audiences in the large cities of America and Europe, but they were invited to sing before the mightiest monarchs and the most distinguished people on the other side of the water. These singers were endowed richly with the sweet and mellow voices that nature has given to their race, but they had also a training under a most skillful and magnetic teacher, Professor George L. White. He not only had genius as a teacher of music, but a profound faith in God that prompted him to undertake a seemingly hopeless enterprise, without adequate means and with little encouragement from others.
He was born in Cadiz, N. Y., in 1833, and was a member of the 73d Ohio regiment. He fought in the battles of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville, and his life was always characterized by a spirit of loyal devotion to his country. At the close of the war he held office in the Freedmen's Bureau and was appointed to be the first treasurer of Fisk University. After training his singers, he started with them on their journey, stopping in Cincinnati and in Oberlin where they were welcomed by the first National Congregational Council; thence eastward, scarcely paying expenses, until they reached Brooklyn, where Henry Ward Beecher gave them an audience completely packing his great church, thus indorsing them for their future career. Their first trip through this country netted $20,000, and a second "campaign" in Great Britain and on the Continent was even more successful. As the result of all the efforts of the Jubilee Singers at home and abroad under different leaders, nearly $150,000 was realized, which was expended in grounds and buildings for Fisk University—an eloquent though silent monument to their remarkable undertaking. In 1881 Mr. White, while at Chautauqua with a band of singers, fell from a platform and suffered injuries from which he never wholly recovered. For several years he has been at Sage College, Ithaca, N. Y., where he has performed a work of great personal influence and endeared himself to all those with whom he came in contact. Mr. White died suddenly November 9, being stricken with paralysis. Services were held in the chapel of Sage College, and also at Fisk University, where some of the original band of singers rendered some of the old Jubilee hymns. He was buried at Fredonia, N. Y., and the interment service was held in the Presbyterian church. A useful career of a consecrated man has terminated amid the sorrows of many friends who yet do not mourn without hope.
MISS ADA M. SPRAGUE.
Another of our faithful workers has finished her work and gone to her rest. On the 23d of November Miss Ada M. Sprague, assistant in the normal department of the Ballard School at Macon, Ga., breathed her last after a brief illness of two weeks. She leaves a widowed mother and twin sister. She has gone in the prime of her young womanhood and in the midst of her usefulness. But she has left behind the example of a consecrated life which will endure.
Miss Sprague was born in Keene, Ohio, November 15, 1863. She was of New England ancestry. Her first experience in teaching was in a country school near her home, where she was very successful. She afterward went to college in Wooster, Ohio, but before she completed her course her father died and she was obliged to give up her studies and find some employment. For the following three or four years she worked in the Pension Office at Columbus, Ohio. Then, offering her services to the American Missionary Association, she was appointed to a position in Tillotson College at Austin, Texas, where she labored faithfully for four years. In October of this year she went to Macon, Ga., where she did her work thoroughly up to within two weeks of her death. She will be sadly missed by the mother, whose main dependence she was, and by the many friends she had made wherever she had lived and labored.