est it.

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. Tenement houses 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 with a view to the needs of dolls
of little money; 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 use these doll-houses were planned, lay, here and
there, in baskets, staring straight up at the ceiling; but in showing
their degrees in society, and keeping them in their own stations (which
is found to be exceedingly difficult in real life), the makers of these
dolls had far improved on nature, for they, not resting on such marks as
satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had made differences which allowed
of no mistake. Thus, the doll-lady of high rank had wax limbs of perfect
shape; but only she and those of her grade; the next grade in the social
scale being made of leather; and the next 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 place 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. Most of these Noah's Arks had knockers on the doors;
perhaps not exactly suitable to an Ark as suggestive of morning callers
and a postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building.
There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the wheels
went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles, drums, and
other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields, swords, spears,
and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches, incessantly
swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head first,
upon the other side; and there were innumerable old gentlemen of
respectable, even v