As his girls grew into womanhood and married, Engel Freund, who was a thrifty and successful tradesman in his prime, dowered each of them with a house in his own neighborhood, seeking thus to perpetuate in the new the kindly patriarchal customs of the old land.
To the New-Yorker of to-day, or, indeed, to any reputable and industrious immigrant, the notion of settling a family in Hester Street could not seem other than grotesque.

It is now the filthy and swarming centre of a very low population.

The Jewish pedlar _par eminence_ lives there and thereabouts.

Signs painted in the characters of his race, not of his accidental nationality, abound on every side.

Here a synagogue occupies the story above a shop; there Masonic symbols are exhibited between the windows in a similar location.