`` 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 peaceable pursuit of toymaking , he was a domestic Ogre , who had been living on children all his life , and was their implacable enemy . He despised all toys ; would n'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 ' consciences , movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved pies ; and other like samples of his stock-in-trade . In appalling masks ; hideous , hairy , red-eyed Jacks in Boxes ; Vampire Kites ; demoniacal Tumblers who would n't lie down , and were perpetually flying forward , to stare infants out of countenance ; his soul perfectly revelled . They were his only relief , and safety-valve . He was great in such inventions . Anything suggestive of a Pony nightmare was delicious to him . He had even lost money -LRB- and he took to that toy very kindly -RRB- by getting up Goblin slides for magic lanterns , whereon the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural shell-fish , with human faces . In intensifying the portraiture of Giants , he had sunk quite a little capital ; and , though no painter himself , he could indicate , for the instruction of his artists , with a piece of chalk , a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those monsters , which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of six and eleven , for the whole Christmas or Midsummer Vacation . What he was in toys , he was -LRB- as most men are -RRB- in other things . You may easily suppose , therefore , that within the great green cape , which reached down to the calves of his legs , there was buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow ; and that he was about as choice a spirit , and as agreeable a companion , as ever stood in a pair of bull-headed-looking boots with mahogany-coloured tops . Still , Tackleton , the toy merchant , was going to be married . In spite of all this , he was going to be married . And to a young wife too , a beautiful young wife . He did n't look much like a Bridegroom , as he stood in the Carrier 's kitchen , with a twist in his dry face , and a screw in his body , and his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose , and his hands tucked down into the bottoms of his pockets , and his whole sarcastic , ill-conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one little eye , like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens . But a Bridegroom he designed to be . `` In three days ' time . Next Thursday .
The last day XXXXX the first month in the year .
If as at by for in of over though to