'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 peace-
able 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' con-
sciences, moveable old ladies who darned stockings or
carved pies; and other like samples of his stock-in-
trade.
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