But it was the germ from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and Tackleton 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 Daughter 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 . Caleb was no sorcerer ; but in the only magic art that still remains to us , the magic of devoted , deathless love , Nature had been the mistress of his study ; and , from her teaching , all the wonder came . The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured , walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there , high crevices unstopped and widening every day , beams mouldering and tending downward . The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting , wood rotting , paper peeling off ; the size , and shape , and true proportion of the dwelling , withering away . The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board ; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house ; that Caleb 's scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey before her sightless face . The Blind Girl never knew they had a master , cold , exacting , and uninterested -- never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton , in short ; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humorist , who loved to have his jest with them , and who , while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives , disdained to hear one word of thankfulness . And all was Caleb 's doing ; all the doing of her simple father ! But he , too , had a Cricket on his Hearth ; and listening sadly to its music when the motherless Blind Child was very young that Spirit had inspired him with the thought that even her great deprivation might be almost changed into a blessing , and the girl made happy by these little means . For all the Cricket tribe are potent Spirits , even though the people who hold converse with them do not know it -LRB- which is frequently the case -RRB- , and there are not in the unseen world voices more gentle and more true , that may be so implicitly relied on , or that are so certain to give none but tenderest counsel , as the Voices in which the Spirits of the Fireside and the Hearth address themselves to humankind . Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual working-room , which served them for their ordinary living-room as well ; and a strange place it was . There were houses in it , finished and unfinished , for Dolls of all stations in life . Suburban tenements for Dolls of moderate means ; kitchens and single apartments for Dolls of the lower classes ; capital town residences for Dolls of high estate . Some of these establishments were already furnished according to estimate , with a view to the convenience of Dolls of limited income ; others could be fitted on the most expensive scale , at a moment 's notice , from whole shelves of chairs and tables , sofas , bedsteads , and upholstery . The nobility and gentry and public in general , for whose accommodation these tenements were designed , lay here and there , in baskets , staring straight up at the ceiling ; but in denoting their degrees in society , and confining them to their respective stations -LRB- which experience shows to be lamentably difficult in real life -RRB- , the makers of these Dolls had far improved on Nature , who is often froward and perverse ; for they , not resting on such arbitrary marks as satin , cotton print , and bits of rag , had superadded striking personal differences which allowed of no mistake . Thus , the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry ; but only she and her compeers . The next grade in the social scale being made of leather , and the next of coarse linen stuff . As to the common people , they had just so many matches out of tinder-boxes for their arms and legs , and there they were -- established in their sphere at once , beyond the possibility of getting out of it . There were various other samples of his handicraft besides Dolls in Caleb Plummer 's room .
There were Noah 's arks , XXXXX which the Birds and Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit , I assure you ; though they could be crammed in , anyhow , at the roof , and rattled and shaken into the smallest compass .
For as at from in of that though to while