And once--but this was many years ago, and the incident was quite forgotten now--when a crowd of street fellows began pelting Crazy Jake, a foolish, half-paralyzed black boy, who begged along the streets, Easter had stepped before him, and, after receiving a few of their clods in her face, had struck out into the gang of his tormenters, grabbed two of its principal leaders by the seats of their trousers, spanked them until they begged for mercy, and let them go. Nobody knew what had become of Crazy Jake after that. Nobody cared. The poor human creature who is not due at any particular place at any particular time can hardly be missed, even when the time comes when he himself misses the _here_ and the _there_ where he has been wont to spend his miserable days, even when he, perhaps having no one else, it is possible that he misses his tormenters. It was a little school-girl who saw the old woman lower her basket to share her scraps with the street dog. It seemed to her a pretty act, and so she told it when she went home. And she told it again at the next meeting of the particular "ten" of the King's Daughters of which she was a member. And this was how the name of Easter, the old black candy-woman, came to be written upon their little book as their chosen object of charity for the coming year. The name 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.