There were beasts of all
sorts; horses, in particular, of every breed, from the spotted
barrel on four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to the
thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle. As it would have been
hard to count the dozens upon dozens of grotesque figures that were
ever ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the turning of a
handle, so it would have been no easy task to mention any human
folly, vice, or weakness, that had not its type, immediate or
remote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in an exaggerated form,
for very little handles will move men and women to as strange
performances, as any Toy was ever made to undertake.
In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter sat at
work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll's dressmaker; Caleb painting
and glazing the four-pair front of a desirable family mansion.
The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb's face, and his absorbed
and dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some alchemist or
abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his
occupation, and the trivialities about him.
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