s. 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; 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'
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
wouldn'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 (and he took to that toy very kindly) 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 (as most men are) 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 didn't look much like a Bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier's
kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and