on 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 (which is frequently the case), 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 (which experience shows
to be lamentably difficult in real life), 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, in 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. By