The hand of Time had also constructed a “working-men’s Metropole” almost opposite Baruch Emanuel’s shop, and papered its outside walls with moral pictorial posters, headed, “Where have you been to, Thomas Brown?” “Mike and his moke,” and so on.  Here, single-bedded cabins could be had as low as fourpence a night.  From the journals in a tobacconist’s window Esther gathered that the reading-public had increased, for there were importations from New York, both in jargon and in pure Hebrew, and from a large poster in Yiddish and English, announcing a public meeting, she learned of the existence of an off-shoot of the Holy Land League—­“The Flowers of Zion Society—­established by East-End youths for the study of Hebrew and the propagation of the Jewish National Idea.”  Side by side with this, as if in ironic illustration of the other side of the life of the Ghetto, was a seeming royal proclamation headed V.R., informing the public that by order of the Secretary of State for War a sale of wrought-and cast-iron, zinc, canvas, tools and leather would take place at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich.

As she wandered on, the great school-bell began to ring; involuntarily, she quickened her step and joined the chattering children’s procession.  She could have fancied the last ten years a dream.  Were they, indeed, other children, or were they not the same that jostled her when she picked her way through this very slush in her clumsy masculine boots?  Surely those little girls in lilac print frocks were her classmates!  It was hard to realize that Time’s wheel had been whirling on, fashioning her to a woman; that, while she had been living and learning and seeing the manners of men and cities, the Ghetto, unaffected by her experiences, had gone on in the same narrow rut.  A new generation of children had arisen to suffer and sport in room of the old, and that was all.  The thought overwhelmed her, gave her a new and poignant sense of brute, blind forces; she seemed to catch in this familiar scene of childhood the secret of the gray atmosphere of her spirit, it was here she had, all insensibly, absorbed those heavy vapors that formed the background of her being, a permanent sombre canvas behind all the iridescent colors of joyous emotion. What had she in common with all this mean wretchedness?  Why, everything.  This it was with which her soul had intangible affinities, not the glory of sun and sea and forest, “the palms and temples of the South.”

The heavy vibrations of the bell ceased; the street cleared; Esther turned back and walked instinctively homewards—­to Royal Street.  Her soul was full of the sense of the futility of life; yet the sight of the great shabby house could still give her a chill.  Outside the door a wizened old woman with a chronic sniff had established a stall for wizened old apples, but Esther passed her by heedless of her stare, and ascended the two miry steps that led to the mud-carpeted passage.