BOOK I.


CHILDREN OF THE GHETTO.






CHAPTER I.

THE BREAD OF AFFLICTION.


A dead and gone wag called the street "Fashion Street," and most of the
people who live in it do not even see the joke. If it could exchange
names with "Rotten Row," both places would be more appropriately
designated. It is a dull, squalid, narrow thoroughfare in the East End
of London, connecting Spitalfields with Whitechapel, and branching off
in blind alleys. In the days when little Esther Ansell trudged its
unclean pavements, its extremities were within earshot of the
blasphemies from some of the vilest quarters and filthiest rookeries in
the capital of the civilized world. Some of these clotted spiders'-webs
have since been swept away by the besom of the social reformer, and the
spiders have scurried off into darker crannies.