What aid her father could give her was doubtless not lacking, but we may well suppose that, as age crept on Engel Freund, his business began to slip away from him into younger hands.

He was probably no longer in a position to endow daughters or to undertake the education of grandchildren.

What is certain is that Caroline Hecker's boys, after very brief school-days, were put at once to hard work.

What decided their choice of an occupation is not so sure, but in all probability they consulted with their mother and then took the common-sense view that as there is a never-failing market for food staples, even poverty, if mated with diligence and sagacity, may find there a fair field for successful enterprise.

John, the eldest, upon whom the mother soon began to rely as her right hand, went to learn his trade as a baker with a Mr.
Schwab, whose shop was on the corner of Hester and Eldridge Streets.
George, who was some three or four years younger, as the only girl, Elizabeth, came between them, presently followed his brother to the same business.
As for Isaac, whom hard necessity, or, more probably, a mistaken thrift, likewise forced away from school when not much more than ten years old, his earliest ventures bear a curious symbolic likeness to his latest.