Tackleton, a toy merchant, called Gruff and Tackleton, because at one time Gruff had been his partner; he had, however, been bought out long ago. Tackleton was a stern, sordid, grinding man; ugly in looks, and uglier in his nature; cold and callous, selfish and unfeeling; his look was sarcastic and malicious; one eye was always wide open, and one nearly shut. He ought to have been a money-lender, a sheriff’s officer, or a broker, for he hated children and hated playthings. It was his greatest delight to make toys which scared children, and you could not please him better than to say that a toy from his warehouse had made a child miserable the whole Christmas holidays, and had been a nightmare to it for half its child-life. This amiable creature was about to marry May Fielding, when her old sweetheart, Edward Plummer, thought to be dead, returned from South America, and married her. Tackleton was reformed by Peerybingle, the carrier, bore his disappointment manfully, sent the bride and bridegroom his own wedding-cake, and joined the festivities of the marriage banquet.--C. Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth (1845).
Taffril (Lieutenant), of H. M. gunbrig Search. He is in love with Jenny Caxton, the milliner.--Sir W. Scott, The Antiquary (time, George III.).
Taffy, a Welshman. The word is simply Davy (David) pronounced with aspiration. David is the most common Welsh name; Sawney (Alexander), the most common Scotch; Pat (Patrick), the most common Irish; and John (John Bull), the most common English. So we have Cousin Michael for a German, Micaire for a Frenchman, Colin Tampon for a Swiss, and Brother Jonathan in the United States.
Tag, wife of Puff, and lady’s maid to Miss Biddy Bellair.--D. Garrick, Miss in Her Teens (1753).
Tahmuras, a king of Persia, whose exploits in Fairy-land among the peris and deevs are fully set forth by Richardson, in his Dissertation.
Tails (Men with). The Niam-niams, an African race between the gulf of Benin and Abyssinia, are said to have tails. Mons. de Castlenau (1851) tells us that the Niam-niams “have tails forty centimetres long, and between two and three centimetres in diameter.” Dr. Hubsch, physician to the hospitals of Constantinople, says, in 1853, that he carefully examined a Niam-niam negress, and that her tail was two inches long. Mons. d’Abbadie, in his Abyssynian Travels (1852), tells us that south of the Herrar is a place where all the men have tails, but not the females. “I have examined,” he says, “fifteen of them, and am positive that the tail is a natural appendage.” Dr. Wolf, in his Travels and Adventures, ii. (1861), says: “There are both men and women in Abyssinia with tails like dogs and horses.” He heard that, near Narea, in Abyssinia, there were men and women with tails so muscular that they could “knock down a horse with a blow.”
John Struys, a Dutch traveller, says, in his Voyages (1650), that “all the natives on the south of Formosa have tails.” He adds that he himself personally saw one of these islanders with a tail “more than a foot long.”
It is said that the Ghilane race, which numbers between 30,000 and 40,000 souls, and dwell “far beyond the Senaar,” have tails three or four inches long. Colonel du Corret assures us that he himself most carefully examined one of the race named Bellal, a slave belonging to an emir in Mecca, whose house he frequented.--World of Wonders, 206.
The Poonangs, of Borneo, are said to be a tail-bearing race.
Individual Examples. Dr. Hubsch says that he examined at Constantinople the son of a physician whom he knew intimately, who had a decided tail, and so had his grandfather.