e was not written, however, without some opposition, some
discussion, and considerable argument. There were several of the ten who
could not easily consent to give up the idea of sending their little
moneys to an Indian or a Chinaman--or to a naked black fellow in his
native Africa.

There is something attractive in the savage who sticks bright feathers
in his hair, carries a tomahawk, and wears moccasins upon his nimble
feet. Most young people take readily to the idea of educating a
picturesque savage and teaching him that the cast-off clothes they send
him are better than his beads and feathers. The picturesque quality is
very winning, find it where we may.

People at a distance may see how very much more interesting and
picturesque the old black woman, Easter, was than any of these, but she
did not seem so to the ten good little maidens who finally agreed to
adopt her for their own--to find her out in her home life, and to help
her.

With them it was an act of simple pity--an act so pure in its motive
that it became in itself beautiful.

Perhaps the idea gained a little following from the fact that Easter
Sunday was approaching, and there was a pleasing fitness in the old
woman's name when it was proposed as an object for their Easter
offerings. But this is a slight consideration.

Certainly when three certain very pious little maidens started out on
the following Saturday morning to find the old woman, Easter, they were
full of interest in their new object, and chattered like magpies, all
three together, about the beautiful things they were going to do for
her.

Somehow, it never occurred to them that they might not find her either
at the Jackson Street and St. Charles Avenue corner, or down near Lee
Circle, or at the door of the Southern Athletic Club, at the corner of
Washington and Prytania streets.

But they found her at none of the familiar haunts; they did not discover
any trace of her all that day, or for quite a week afterward. They had
inquired of the grocery-man at the corner where she often rested--of the
portresses of several schools where she sometimes peddled her candy at
recess-time, and at the bakery where she occasionally bought a loaf of
yesterday's bread. But nobody remembered having seen her recently.

Several people knew and were pleased to tell how she always started out
in the direction of the swamp every evening when the gas was lit in the
city, and that she turned out over the brid