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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