The premises of Gruff and Tackleton
were the great feature of the street; but you might
have knocked down Caleb Plummer's dwelling with
a hammer or two, and carried off the pieces in a cart.
If any one had done the dwelling-house of Caleb
Plummer the honour to miss it after such an inroad,
it would have been, no doubt, to commend its demoli-
tion as a vast improvement. It stuck to the premises
of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a ship's
keel, or a snail to a door, or a little bunch of toad-
stools to the stem of a tree. But, it was the germ
from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackle-
ton had sprung; and, under its crazy roof, the Gruff
before last, had, in a small way, made toys for a
generation of old boys and girls, who had played
with them, and found them out, and broken them, and
gone to sleep.
I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daugh-
ter lived here. I should have said that Caleb lived
here, and his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else --
in an enchanted home of Caleb's furnishing, where
scarcity and shabbiness were not, and trouble never
entered.
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