The four horses of no
colour, next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and could
be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of
fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and to
stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they were
brought home for a Christmas present. They were all right, then;
neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests,
as appears to be the case now. The tinkling works of the music-
cart, I DID find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and
I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves,
perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down,
head foremost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person--though
good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next him, made of little
squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one
another, each developing a different picture, and the whole
enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
Ah! The Doll's house!--of which I was not proprietor, but where I
visited. I don't admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as
that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps,
and a real balcony--greener than I ever see now, except at watering
places; and even they afford but a poor imitation. And though it
DID open all at once, the entire house-front (which was a blow, I
admit, as cancelling the fiction of a staircase), it was but to shut
it up again, and I could believe. Even open, there were three
distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly
furnished, and best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-
irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils--oh, the
warming-pan!--and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to
fry two fish. What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble
feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with its own
peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and
garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss! Could
all the Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me
such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little
set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out of
the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and
which made tea, nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual
little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose,
like Punch's hands, what does it matter? And if I did once shriek
out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with
consternation, by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon,
inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for
it, except by a powder!
Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green
roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to
hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and
with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat
black letters to begin with! "A was an archer, and shot at a frog."
Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He
was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his
friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I never knew
him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe--like Y, who was always
confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a
Zebra or a Zany.
