the weird old
creature, who had for so many years appeared daily upon the streets,
nobody seemed to know from where, disappearing with the going down of
the sun as mysteriously as the golden disk itself. Of course, if any one
had cared to insist upon knowing how she lived or where she stayed at
nights, he might have followed her at a distance. But it is sometimes
very easy for a very insignificant and needy person to rebuff those who
honestly believe themselves eager to help. And so, when Old Easter, the
candy-woman, would say, in answer to inquiries about her life, "I sleeps
at night 'way out by de Metarie Ridge Cemetery, an' gets up in de
mornin' up at de Red Church. I combs my ha'r wid de _latanier_, an'
washes my face in de Ole Basin," it was so easy for those who wanted to
help her to say to their consciences, "She doesn't want us to know where
she lives," and, after a few simple kindnesses, to let the matter drop.

The above ready reply to what she would have called their "searchin'
question" proved her a woman of quick wit and fine imagination. Anybody
who knows New Orleans at all well knows that Metarie Ridge Cemetery,
situated out of town in the direction of the lake shore, and the old Red
Church, by the riverside above Carrollton, are several miles apart.
People know this as well as they know that the _latanier_ is the
palmetto palm of the Southern wood, with its comb-like, many-toothed
leaves, and that the Old Basin is a great pool of scum-covered, murky
water, lying in a thickly-settled part of the French town, where numbers
of small sailboats, coming in through the bayou with their cargoes of
lumber from the coast of the Sound, lie against one another as they
discharge and receive their freight.

If all the good people who knew her in her grotesque and pitiful street
character had been asked suddenly to name the very poorest and most
miserable person in New Orleans, they would almost without doubt have
immediately replied, "Why, old Aunt Easter, the candy-woman. Who could
be poorer than she?"

To be old and black and withered and a beggar, with nothing to recommend
her but herself--her poor, insignificant, ragged self--who knew nobody
and whom nobody knew--that was to be poor, indeed.

Of course, Old Easter was not a professional beggar, but it was well
known that before she disappeared from the streets every evening one end
of her long candy-basket was generally pretty well filled with loose
paper par