The Ghetto was all astir, for it was half-past eight of a workaday morning. But Esther had not walked a hundred yards before her breast was heavy with inauspicious emotions. The well-known street she had entered was strangely broadened. Instead of the dirty picturesque houses rose an appalling series of artisans' dwellings, monotonous brick barracks, whose dead, dull prose weighed upon the spirits. But, as in revenge, other streets, unaltered, seemed incredibly narrow. Was it possible it could have taken even her childish feet six strides to cross them, as she plainly remembered? And they seemed so unspeakably sordid and squalid. Could she ever really have walked them with light heart, unconscious of the ugliness? Did the grey atmosphere that overhung them ever lift, or was it their natural and appropriate mantle? Surely the sun could never shine upon these slimy pavements, kissing them to warmth and life. Great magic shops where all things were to be had--peppermints and cotton, china-faced dolls and lemons--had dwindled into the front windows of tiny private dwelling-houses; the black-wigged crones, the greasy, shambling men, were uglier and greasier than she had ever conceived them. They seemed caricatures of humanity--scarecrows in battered hats or draggled skirts. But gradually, as the scene grew upon her, she perceived that, in spite of the 'model dwellings' builder, it was essentially unchanged. No vestige of improvement had come over Wentworth Street--the narrow noisy market street, where serried barrows flanked the reeking roadway exactly as of old, and where Esther trod on mud and refuse and babies. Babies! they were everywhere; at the breasts of unwashed women, on the knees of grandfathers smoking pipes; playing under the barrows, sprawling in the gutters and the alleys. All the babies' faces were sickly and dirty, with pathetic childish prettinesses asserting themselves against the neglect and the sallowness. One female mite in a dingy tattered frock sat in an orange box, surveying the bustling scene with a preternaturally grave expression, and realising literally Esther's early conception of the theatre. There was a sense of blankness in the wanderer's heart, of unfamiliarity in the midst of familiarity. What had she in common with all this mean wretchedness, with this semi-barbarous breed of beings? The more she looked, the more her heart sank. There was no flaunting vice, no rowdiness, no drunkenness, only the squalor of an Oriental city without its quaintness and colour. She studied the posters and the shop-windows, and caught old snatches of gossip from the groups in the butcher's shop. All seemed as of yore. And yet here and there the hand of Time had traced new inscriptions. For Baruch Emanuel the hand of Time had written a new placard. It was a mixture of German, bad English and Cockneyese, phonetically spelt in Hebrew letters: