Children's own library . might,and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do. CHIEP THE SECOND. Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived allalone by themselves, as the Story-Books say, in a littlecracked nutshell of a wooden house. You might haveknocked down Caleb Plummers dwelling with a hammeror two, and carried off the pieces in a cart; and if anyone had done the house the honor to miss it after suchan inroad, it would have been, no doubt, to commend itsdemolition as a vast improvement. It stuck to the prem-ises of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a shipskeel, or a little b
Children's own library . might,and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do. CHIEP THE SECOND. Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived allalone by themselves, as the Story-Books say, in a littlecracked nutshell of a wooden house. You might haveknocked down Caleb Plummers dwelling with a hammeror two, and carried off the pieces in a cart; and if anyone had done the house the honor to miss it after suchan inroad, it would have been, no doubt, to commend itsdemolition as a vast improvement. It stuck to the prem-ises of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a shipskeel, or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem of a it was the germ from which the full-grown trunk ofGruff and Tackleton had sprung. I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughterlived here; but I should have said that Caleb lived here, THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. 35 and his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else; in an en-chanted home of Calebs furnishing, where scarcity andshabbiness were not and trouble never entered. Caleb. was no Sorcerer, but in the only magic art that stillremains to us: the magic of devoted, deathless love:Nature had been the mistress of his study; and from herteaching, all the wonder came. 36 THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discol-ored ; walls blotched, and bare of plaster here and there;high crevices unstopped, and widening every day; beamsmouldering and tending downward. The Blind Girlnever knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenwarewere on the board j that Calebs scanty hairs were turn-ing grayer and more gray before her sightless face. TheBlind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting,and uninterested: never knew that Tackleton was Tack-leton, in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentrichumorist who loved to have his jest with them; andwhile he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdainedto hear one word of thankfulness. And all was Calebs doing. But he too had a Cricketon his Hearth; and listeni
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