The Goldsteins had three children. Isaac was eighteen. Two years before he had graduated from the House of Refuge--a pickpocket of parts. He had his ups and downs, but on the whole he found money "easy," and hardly a week passed when he did not hand his mother a few dollars. The twin daughters of sixteen were working and brought their wages home. Rosa was anæmic, querulous, and unattractive. She worked "bei buttonholes." A slight curvature of the spine, which had become apparent in her childhood, had developed into a pitiful deformity after the years bent over a machine. Rachel had monopolized all the charms of health and good spirits which should have been divided between them. Her face looked much younger than Rosa's, but her body had developed into a pleasing womanhood which had been entirely denied her sister. She was not beautiful, but she was red blooded, merry, and likable. She was a milliner and earned twice as much as Rosa. So the Goldsteins should have been fairly prosperous, but the father's craving for alcohol had grown more rapidly than the earning capacity of his children. Poverty had weighed too heavily on Mrs. Goldstein to allow her to tolerate an idler, and besides she had always looked with disapproval on Yetta's unwomanly education. It seemed almost impious to her to have a girl in school. She had perjured herself blissfully about the age of her own daughters to avoid the Truant Officer. For a few days the family left Yetta alone in her room to cry. Then they jerked her out of the stupor of her grief, and threw her into the cauldron of modern industry. Rachel had seen a sign which advertised the need of "beginners" in the Vest Trade. Yetta followed her docilely up two flights of dirty stairs into a long work-room, which had been made by knocking the partitions out of a tenement-house flat. It was a gloomy place, for the side windows were faced by a dingy brick wall three feet away. The end windows looked out on Allen Street. The tracks of the elevated were on a level with the floor, and every few minutes the light which might have been expected from this quarter was cut off by the rush of a train. Artificial illumination was needed all the year round. In the street below children shouted and cried; pushcart peddlers hawked their wares in strident, rasping voices; heavy trucks, loaded with clattering milk-cans, rattled deafeningly over the cobblestones. The chaos of noise caught in the narrow cañon of the street seemed to unaccustomed ears a pandemonium which must be audible in high heaven.