, dey welcome to come
an' go. I des picked 'em up here an' dar 'caze dey was whinin'. Any
breathin' thing dat I sees dat's poorer 'n what I is, why, I fetches 'em
out once-t, an' dey mos' gin'ally stays.

"But if you yo'ng ladies 'll come out d'reckly after Easter Sunday, when
I got my pervisions in, why I'll show you how de ladies intertain dey
company in de old days when Gin'ral Jackson used ter po' de wine."

Needless to say, there was such a birthday party as had never before
been known in the little shanty on the Easter following the visit of the
three little maids of the King's Daughters.

When Old Easter had finished her duties as hostess, sharing her good
things equally with those who sat at her little table and those who
squatted in an outer circle on the floor, she remarked that it carried
her away back to old times when she stood behind the governor's chair
"while he h'isted his wineglass an' drink ter de ladies' side curls."
And Crazy Jake said yes, he remembered, too. And then he began to nod,
while blind Pete remarked, "To my eyes de purtiest thing about de whole
birfday party is de bo'quet o' Easter lilies in de middle o' de table."

SAINT IDYL'S LIGHT

SAINT IDYL'S LIGHT

You would never have guessed that her name was Idyl--the slender,
angular little girl of thirteen years who stood in her faded gown of
checkered homespun on the brow of the Mississippi River. And fancy a
saint balancing a bucket of water on top of her head!

Yet, as she puts the pail down beside her, the evening sun gleaming
through her fair hair seems to transform it into a halo, as some one
speaks her name, "Saint Idyl."

Her thin, little ears, sun-filled as she stands, are crimson disks; and
the outlines of her upper arms, dimly seen through the flimsy sleeves,
are as meagre as are the ankles above her bare, slim feet.

The appellation "Saint Idyl," given first in playful derision, might
have been long ago forgotten but for the incident which this story
records.

It was three years before, when the plantation children, colored and
white together, had been saying, as is a fashion with them, what they
would like to be.

One had chosen a "blue-eyed lady wid flounces and a pink fan," another a
"fine white 'oman wid long black curls an' ear-rings," and a third would
have been "a hoop-skirted lady wid a tall hat."

It was then that Idyl, the only white child of the group--the adopted
orphan of the overseer's fa