"Of the many wonderful tales Moor told me, the most wonderful, the most delightful one, was "Hans Rockle." It went on for months; it was a whole series of stories... Hans Rockle himself was a Hoffman-like magician, who kept a toyshop, and who was always "hard up." His shop was full of the most wonderful things--of wooden men and women, giants and dwarfs, kings and queens, workmen and masters, animals and birds as numerous as Noah got into the Ark, tables and chairs, carriages, boxes of all sorts and sizes. And though he was a magician, Hans could never meet his obligations either to the devil or to the butcher, and was therefore--much against the grain--constantly obliged to sell his toys to the devil. These then went through wonderful adventures--always ending in a return to Hans Rockle's shop. --Eleanor Marx, on her father Karl's bedtime stories (in Stallybrass 1998:198)" --