'After a hard struggle, I suppose?'
'Very.'
Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as Gruff and
Tackleton--for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out
long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature,
according to its Dictionary meaning, in the business--Tackleton the
Toy-merchant, was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood
by his Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender,
or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a Broker, he might
have sown his discontented oats in his youth, and, after having had
the full run of himself in ill-natured transactions, might have
turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little freshness and
novelty. But, cramped and chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-
making, he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on children all
his life, and was their implacable enemy. He despised all toys;
wouldn't have bought one for the world; delighted, in his malice,
to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of brown-paper farmers
who drove pigs to market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers'
consciences, movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved
pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade.
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