The Toy-Maker and His Blind Daughter

"The Toy-Maker and His Blind Daughter" is a short story by Charles Dickens that explores themes of love, sacrifice, and resilience. Set in Victorian England, it follows the life of a toy-maker who lovingly cares for his blind daughter. As he strives to provide for her and bring joy into her life through his creations, the story delves into the challenges they face and the enduring bond between father and daughter. Dickens poignantly captures the struggles of those with disabilities, the strength of familial love, and the hope that can be found even in difficult circumstances.

• Children

								
CALEB PLUMMER and his blind daughter lived alone in a little cracked
nutshell of a house. They were toy-makers, and their house, which was so
small that it might have been knocked to pieces with a hammer, and
carried away in a cart, was stuck like a toadstool on to the premises of
Messrs. Gruff & Tackleton, the toy merchants for whom they worked--the
latter of whom was himself both Gruff and Tackleton in one.

I am saying that Caleb and his blind daughter lived here. I should say
Caleb did, while his daughter lived in an enchanted palace, which her
father's love had created for her. She did not know that the ceilings
were cracked, the plaster tumbling down, and the woodwork rotten; that
everything was old and ugly and poverty-stricken about her, and that her
father was a gray-haired, stooping old man, and the master for whom they
worked a hard and brutal taskmaster; oh, dear no, she fancied a pretty,
cosy, compact little home full of tokens of a kind master's care, a
smart, brisk, gallant-looking father, and a handsome and noble-looking
toy merchant who was an angel of goodness.

This was all Caleb's doing. When his blind daughter was a baby he had
determined, in his great love and pity for her, that her loss of sight
should be turned into a blessing, and her life as happy as he could make
it. And she was happy; everything about her she saw with her father's
eyes, in the rainbow-colored light with which it was his care and
pleasure to invest 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 venerable, appearance, flying like crazy people over
pegs, inserted, for the purpose, in their own street-doors. There were
beasts of all sorts, horses, in particular, of every breed, from the
spotted barrel on four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to the fine
rocking horse on his highest mettle.

"You were out in the rain last night in your beautiful new overcoat,"
said Bertha.

"Yes, in my beautiful new overcoat," answered Caleb, glancing to where a
roughly-made garment of sackcloth was hung up to dry.

"How glad I am you bought it, father."

"And of such a tailor! quite a fashionable tailor; a bright blue cloth,
with bright buttons; it's a deal too good a coat for me."

"Too good!" cried the blind girl, stopping to laugh and clap her
hands--"as if anything was too good for my handsome father, with his
smiling face, and black hair, and his straight figure, as if any thing
could be too good for my handsome father!"

"I'm half ashamed to wear it, though," said Caleb, watching the effect
of what he said upon her brightening face; "upon my word. When I hear
the boys and people say behind me: 'Halloa! Here's a swell!' I don't
know which way to look. And when the beggar wouldn't go away last night;
and, when I said I was a very common man, said 'No, your honor! Bless
your honor, don't say that!' I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I
hadn't a right to wear it."

Happy blind girl! How merry she was in her joy!

"I see you, father," she said, clasping her hands, "as plainly as if I
had the eyes I never want when you are with me. A blue coat!"----

"Bright blue," said Caleb.

"Yes, yes! Bright blue!" exclaimed the girl, turning up her radiant
face; "the color I can just remember in the blessed sky! You told me it
was blue before! A bright blue coat----"

"Made loose to the figure," suggested Caleb.

"Yes! loose to the figure!" cried the blind girl, laughing heartily;
"and in it you, dear father, with your merry eye, your smiling face,
your free step, and your dark hair; looking so young and handsome!"

"Halloa! Halloa!" said Caleb. "I shall be vain presently."

"I think you are already," cried the blind girl, pointing at him, in her
glee. "I know you, father! Ha, ha, ha! I've found you out, you see!"

How different the picture in her mind from Caleb, as he sat observing
her! She had spoken of his free step. She was right in that. For years
and years he never once had crossed that threshold at his own slow pace,
but with a footfall made ready for her ear, and never had he, when his
heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to render hers so
cheerful and courageous.

"There we are," said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to form the
better judgment of his work; "as near the real thing as sixpen'orth of
halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that the whole front of the house
opens at once! If there was only a staircase in it now, and regular

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