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More "Toad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... n. name applied to a frog living in the inland parts of New South Wales, Notaden bennettii, Guenth., which tides over times of drought in burrows, and feeds on ants. Called also "Holy Cross Toad." The names are given in consequence of a large cross-shaped blackish marking on ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... "Oh, bless me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,—and I do not object,—and I do not believe ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... mean, Toad," she answered, kicking him with her slippered foot. "I had to listen to your talk of love while we journeyed together, and before, but here I need not, and if you speak of it again you shall go living into that baker's oven. Oh! ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... The matter had been discussed in newspapers. Indeed, a caricaturist ventured to publish a sketch showing Pitt as Adam conducting Eve to the nuptial bower in the garden of Eden, while behind it squatted Satan as a toad, leering hatred through the features of Fox. It is to be hoped that Auckland did not know of this indelicate cartoon when he replied to Pitt. That letter has very properly been destroyed. But we ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... nothing! I was but thinking how I bit into his hand. Sooner would I bite living toad or poisoned snake. Oh, I shall loathe my lips forever! But you—how brave you were, and how quick! How meek for yourself, and how bold for a stranger! If I were a man, I should wish to ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... present of them and a million dollars to boot. I wouldn't take them for a gift if that mountain was pure gold—how's he going to haul the ore to the railroad? Now listen, my friend, I've known that boy since he stood knee-high to a toad and of all the liars in Arizona he stands ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... and said, "Now I will rid myself of a foe;" and he flew down upon the poor Tintabel, and being a more powerful fairy, he caught him, and pinned his wings together with magic thorns, and fastened him down with them among the fungus and toad-stools of the damp wood. Then he flew away exulting, and painted day and night. It was a magnificent picture, with stately figures, powerful and triumphant, and Orgolino's heart swelled with pride at ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... "The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes. The butterfly beside the road Preaches contentment ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... streets seized with it, and before their friends could be found they were dead. All sorts of odd things were offered in order to keep away the infection. One, that a great many foolish people believed in, was a dried toad strung on a string round the neck—as if that could have made ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... corner of our room I discerned a brown toad of monstrous size squatting in great comfort on the damp flags. He was as big as a trussed chicken, and looked something like one in the twilight. We pointed him out to the administrador, who brought in two fierce watchdogs, but the toad ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... all roads," said Ben, firmly; "one must take the stage to Boxville, and I'll take Deacon Brown's wagon on the Hingham road, and somebody else must go to Toad Hollow." ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... easier than to learn it, your majesty," whispered the countess, "squat like a toad, close to the ear of Eve"—"the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... now the raven's bleak abode; 'Tis now th' apartment of the toad; And there the fox securely feeds; And there the poisonous adder breeds Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds: While, ever and anon, there falls Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls. Yet time has seen, that lifts the low, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... of youth. Doubtless they fancied that the fountain sought would have some special marks, something to distinguish it from the host of common springs. But this might not be the case. The most precious things may lie concealed under the plainest aspect, like the fabled jewel in the toad's forehead, and it was certainly wisest to let no waters ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that the prize for the most complete compound was given to Mr. Kittredge, who had conceived of a "pigeon-toad, with a lovely long dove-tail, and a pot-pied waistcoat ringed and streaked, and a sweet dove-cot-ton veil." Frieda and Hannah came solemnly into the room, bearing a crate, from the top of which appeared the head of a rooster, with a big bow of ribbon around its neck. They set it ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... there was not even a squirrel or a mouse. I think two toads and a small and harmless snake were the only living creatures that had been discovered during the whole of the first fortnight. And these two toads in all probability were not two toads, but one toad. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... "bough-deer" as the poets call them, are very different animals from the "turpissima bestia" that accompanies the itinerant organ-grinder or grins in the Zoological Gardens of London. Milton has made his hero, Satan, assume the forms of a cormorant, a toad, and a serpent, and I cannot see that this creation of semi-divine Vanars, or monkeys, is more ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... for Gwynplaine an interlude, with which he was well pleased. It was his best work. He had thrown his whole soul into it. To give the sum of all one's talents in the production is the greatest triumph that any one can achieve. The toad which produces a toad achieves a grand success. You doubt it? Try, then, to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... he came in sight of the sinister triangular building which crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, Vanderlyn's heart failed him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed lying there exposed to the careless, morbid glances of idle sightseers to whom the Morgue is one of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the rough grass fields tough, wiry bents, thistles with purple flowers, and the remnants of oxeye daisies on brittle stalks rise almost to the height of your knees. Lovely blue bell-flowers grow in patches; golden ragwort, two sorts of field scabious, yellow toad-flax, and occasionally some white campion remain almost into winter. Where the grass is shorter masses of shrivelled wild thyme may be seen. The charlock brightens the landscape with its mass of colour among the turnips until the end of November, if the season be fairly mild. But the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... bends them, while she finds herself unable to gather the slender grasses. Then there are such charming nooks for hiding, among the ferns and hazel-bushes, and the bits of mica glistening all along the road are each of a different size and shape, and must be carefully collected. The toad startles her as it leaps out of the road, the grasshoppers strike her face, and wonderful people drive by in wonderful machines, drawn by vast and wonderful animals. The amount of knowledge which an intelligent child will accumulate during seven weeks' stay in a quiet country ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... over women with flowery speeches. 'You are an ugly fellow yourself,' said the girl, laughing at me; 'get away with you!' 'They won't hurt you, my little Rebecca,' said I, stroking her cheeks. 'What's that to you, old sorcerer?' said the little toad; 'if I were to scream, the whole roomful would come to my aid.' 'Don't be so contradictious, my child,' said I; 'be a good girl, fill another bottle, and bring it out here. One must do something for one's friends in bad times.' Then she snatched ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... hand which still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirm'd its grasp, As if it said, 'Detain me, if you please;' Yet there 's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze: She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... worse. He's an Irish traitor, I tell you, and feeds on the blood of his people. He was the toad that made fools of us all, and wormed himself into our secrets, and then turned and stabbed us in the back. But we're not dead yet. We'll be even ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... while my niece fed him in his hiding-place. I encouraged you to seek everywhere, and kept you back from the place where he was. I—I made pretence of tolerating your hateful presence. I made you think that I cared for you, loved you, you, you—I would rather love a toad." ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... more about the origin of the quarrel, he said, 'Mrs. Martins is an old witch, gentlemen, that is what she is, and she charmed me, and I got no sleep for her for three nights, and one night at half-past eleven o'clock, I got up because I could not sleep, and went out and found a "walking toad" under a clod that had been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I could not rest; she is a bad old woman; she put this toad under there to charm me, and her daughter is just as bad, gentlemen. She ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... a glance around, As he lighted down from his courser toad, Then round his breast his wings he wound, And close to the river's brink he strode; He sprang on a rock, he breathed a prayer, Above his head his arm he threw, Then tossed a tiny curve in air, And headlong plunged in the water ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... old-fashioned one—continued still to keep up their meetings, and carry on their affairs as steadily and gravely as Fox and his contemporaries did, if not so extensively and successfully. They had a meeting at Codnor Breach, at Monny-Ash in the Peak, at Pentridge, at Toad-hole Furnace, at Chesterfield, etc. Most of these places were thoroughly country places, some of them standing nearly alone in the distant fields; and the few members belonging to them might be seen on Sundays, mounted on strong horses, a man and his wife often on one, on ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... don't know her as well as I. Ecod! I know every inch about her; and there's not a more bitter cantankerous toad in all Christendom. ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... awakened by the low growling, and short bark of the dog. The night was far spent; the tiny sparks of the fire-flies that were glancing in the doorway, began to grow pale; the chirping of the crickets and lizards, and the snore of the tree-toad waxed fainter, and the wild cry of the tiger-cat was no longer heard. The terral, or land-wind, which is usually strongest towards morning, moaned loudly on the hillside, and came rushing past with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... round, red eyes had no gleam of intelligence, and its hairless skin, covered with minute, sucker-like scales, lay in loose, ugly folds across its great chest. Most of its movements were slow and uncertain, and it hopped about over the floor like a giant toad, uttering guttural sounds deep within its chest. Omega had set out to create an ape-man, but this thing was neither man nor beast, bird or reptile, but a travesty on all—an unspeakable horror from the ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... a polypier, and its particular name is the fungia being so called because it resembles a vegetable fungus. The animal lives inside of that circular shell, which is formed something like the under side of a toad-stool. Between the thin plates, or leaves, the polypier thrusts out its arms with little suckers at the ends. With these it seizes its food and conveys it to its mouth, which is situated at the centre of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... he will murmur, "Tuesday. What d'you fancy? It's fowl-and-bacon day at 'The Mitre.' That's always good. Or it's stewed-steak day at 'The Old Bull,' near the Bank; beautiful steak; done to a turn at one-fifteen. Or it's curry day at the Oriental place in Holborn, if you like curries. Or it's chop toad-in-the-hole day at Salter's; ready at two o'clock. The one in Strand's the best. But don't go sharp at two. Wait till about two-twenty. The batter ain't quite what it should be at two sharp; but just after that ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster-shell; If things that promise nothing do contain What better is than gold; who will disdain, That have an inkling of it, there to look, That they may find it? Now, my little book, (Though void of all these paintings that may make It with this or the ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... ax Jesus one day carry me next day! Can't make up my bed. Like an old hog sleep on a tussick." (I always heard it 'Toad on a tussock'—and you?) ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... which looked somewhat like a wonderful mosaic of opals and jade at this hour, a Mexican goatherd was driving his flock. That was the only sign of life to be seen or felt, if you except the noise of locusts in the mesquite near by and the spasmodic progress of a horned toad in the sand ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... of asking for such fellows' reasons? The soul of man," said Caleb, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head which always came when he used this phrase—"The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Roland had a certain amount of nerve, but not enough to enable him to bear up against this sinister persecution. Yet what could he do? Suppose he did beware to the extent of withdrawing his support from the royalist movement, what then? Bombito. If ever there was a toad under the harrow, he was that toad. And all because a perfectly respectful admiration for the caoutchouc had led him to occupy a stage-box several nights in succession at the theater where the peerless Maraquita tied herself ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... bason-crested Quixote, lean and bold,'—good, is it not? Oh, while it strikes me, good, too, is that 'Swineshead Monk' ballad! Only I miss the old chronicler's touch on the method of concocting the poison: 'Then stole this Monk into the Garden and under a certain herb found out a Toad, which, squeezing into a cup,' &c. something to that effect. I suspect, par parenthese, you have found out by this time my odd liking for 'vermin'—you once wrote 'your snails'—and certainly snails are old clients of mine—but ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... consequence of its singularity. There existed a community or commonwealth, of "fallen angels" or spirits, with the various titles of kings, dukes, &c., prelates and knights, of which the head was Baal, "who, when he was conjured up, appeared with three heads, one like a man, one like a toad, and one like a cat." The title of king conferred no extra power; indeed, Agares, "the first duke, came in the likeness of a faire old man, riding upon a crocodile, and carrying a hawk on his fist"—Marbas, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window-bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to lead ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lady-bird, the death's-head plant-louse, the daddy-long-legs, "the devil," a black insect, which menaces by twisting about its tail armed with two horns. He has his fabulous monster, which has scales under its belly, but is not a lizard, which has pustules on its back, but is not a toad, which inhabits the nooks of old lime-kilns and wells that have run dry, which is black, hairy, sticky, which crawls sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, which has no cry, but which has a look, and is so terrible that no one has ever ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... TOAD.—You may expect deceit and the discovery of disagreeable facts; this sign should caution you to be on your guard, for malicious talking causes much discomfort and may ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... of Algernon Sidney, at which Jeffreys presided, like a great crimson toad, sweltering and swelling with rage. 'I pray God, Mr. Sidney,' said this Chief Justice of a merry reign, after passing sentence, 'to work in you a temper fit to go to the other world, for I see you are ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... as bad. Mother gave him a book with very nice pictures, particularly of beasts. The chief reason she got it for him was that there was such a very good picture of a toad, and Chris is so fond of toads. For months he made friends with one in the garden. It used to crawl away from him, and he used to creep after it, talking to it, and then it used to half begin to crawl up the garden ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... an object that gleamed dimly through the gloom. It was about ten inches or a foot high, but in that place nothing more could be seen of it, except that it was yellow and had the general appearance of a toad. For some reason it seemed to attract Sir Robert Aylward, for he halted to stare at it, then stretched out his hand and switched on another lamp, in the hard brilliance of which the thing upon the ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... been to a lecture the night before, to Toad Holler, a little place between Jonesville and Loontown. He and uncle Nate Burpy went up to hear a speech aginst wimmen's ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... low growling, and short bark of the dog. The night was far spent; the tiny sparks of the fire—flies that were glancing in the doorway began to grow pale; the chirping of the crickets and lizards, and the snore of the tree—toad, waxed fainter, and the wild cry of the tiger—cat was no longer heard. The terral, or land—wind, which is usually strongest towards morning, moaned loudly on the hillside, and came rushing past with a melancholy sough, through the brushwood that surrounded the hut, shaking off ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... dark man, with a skin of oily sallowness; thickset, with something of the slow ungainliness of a toad. His head was set low between stooped shoulders, and his crafty eyes had in them a look of scheming, scheming always for his own interests. Smith knew his record as well as he knew his own: a dance-hall hanger-on in his youth, despised of men; a blackmailer; ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... glory about them, some shining threads of possible virtue. They might have been good, even great in goodness, but for the malady of not wanting. But Huish is a creature hatched in slime, his soul has no true humanity: it is squat and toad-like, and can only spit venom. . . . He himself felt a sort of revulsive after-sickness for the story, and calls it in one passage of his Vailima Letters 'the ever-to-be-execrated Ebb-Tide' (pp. 178 and 184). . . . He repented of it like ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... habits of wild animals, as frog, toad, squirrel, ground-hog; habits and structures, including adaptive features, of domestic animals, as dog, cat, horse, cow. (See pp. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... stroke the purring pussy, Kindly pat the friendly dog; Let your unmolesting mercy Even spare the toad or frog. ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... entirely reptilian. Its body hugged the earth in order to expose as little surface as possible to the enemy's fire; it was mottled like a toad in patches of coloring to add to its low visibility, and there was no more hop in it than in ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the lady was out of tune, I was in haste to leave her. I should make a very bad, and, I am sure, a miserable toad eater. I had much rather, if I were obliged to choose, earn my own bread, than live as ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... would go off along the white road that led to Garchester, and on to Crogate and so to Tunbridge Wells, where there was a Toad Rock he had heard of, but never seen. (It seemed to him this must needs be a marvel.) And so to other towns and cities. He would walk and loiter by the way, and sleep in inns at night, and get an odd job here and there and talk to strange people. Perhaps he would get quite a lot ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... under it, and fall down with it, and do everything but sit upon it, and then to make a cravat of his legs, and tie them round his neck, and then to illustrate the ease with which a human being can be made to look like a magnified toad—all which feats yielded high delight and satisfaction to the assembled spectators. After which, the voice of Mrs. Pott was heard to chirp faintly forth, something which courtesy interpreted into a song, which was all very classical, and strictly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... crevasses, finding our passage much facilitated by the previous efforts of our guides. We were constantly walking over ground strewed with crumbling blocks of ice, the recent fall of which was proved by their sharp white fractures, and with a thing like an infirm toad stool twenty feet high, towering above our heads. Once we passed under a natural arch of ice, built in evident disregard of all principles of architectural stability. Hurrying judiciously at such critical points, and creeping slowly round those where the footing was difficult, we manage to thread ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... Lacedaemonians and without the protection of my buckler. Yet I have many reasons for fear. I know our rustics; they are delighted if some braggart comes, and rightly or wrongly, loads both them and their city with praise and flattery; they do not see that such toad-eaters(1) are traitors, who sell them for gain. As for the old men, I know their weakness; they only seek to overwhelm the accused with their votes.(2) Nor have I forgotten how Cleon treated me because of my comedy last year;(3) he dragged me before the Senate ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... if he didn't make a mistake, and it wasn't the church had the nervous breakdown instead. He isn't very big nor very little; he's just insignificant. His hair is like wet straw, and his eyes like a fish's. His hand feels like a dead toad when you have to shake hands, which I'm thankful doesn't have to be done but once. He looks at you with a flat, sickening grin. He has an acquired double chin, acquired to make him look pompous, and he ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Mr. Toad are cousins. Of course you know that without being told. Everybody does. But not everybody knows that they were born in the same place. They were. Yes, Sir, they were. They were born in the Smiling Pool. Both had long tails and for ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... does my Lady take any more notice of her than of the dust of the earth. She calls her "poor Muchit," and considers her a half-witted creature. Mrs. Berry hates her cordially, and thinks she is a designing toad-eater, who has formed a conspiracy to rob her of her aunt's fortune. She never spoke a word to poor Muchit during the whole of dinner, or offered to help her to anything ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... place. "And take that," she cried, "for a present, you father of a speckled toad!" And seizing the heavy quarto Bible from the table, she flung it with all her might full in his face. It happened to hit him on the bridge of his nose, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... guessed long ago. But you see, Jacob, we didn't know. It might have been just gossip. And then, besides"—she frowned and dropped her voice till it was only just audible—"this horrid man hadn't made our Julie so—so conspicuous, and Lady Henry hadn't turned out such a toad—and, altogether, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breasts of the cruel Thracians; Canidia, having interwoven her hair and uncombed head with little vipers, orders wild fig-trees torn up from graves, orders funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad, and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which lolchos, and Spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in Colchian flames. But Sagana, tucked up for expedition, ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... your father is dreaming of!" she said one day, when she had sat for some time looking at Dolly, who was drawing. "He seems to think it quite natural that you should live down here at this cottage, year in and year out, like a toad in a hole; with no more life or society. We might as well be shut up in a nunnery, only then there would be more of us. I never heard of a nunnery with ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... Giles. "Good father, heed not a woman; they are caught by the lip and the fist, like my lord's trencher-man. This Sir Osmund is both lean and ill-favoured. I wonder what the Lady Mabel saw above his shoe to wed with an ugly toad spawned i' the Welsh marshes. Had ye seen her first husband, Sir William Bradshaigh—rest his soul! he was killed in the wars—you would have marvelled that she drunk the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... round about young Tom?" queried one of the men in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was, 'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n knee-high to a hop-toad!" ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... "That horned toad'll get a rush of blood to his head!" cried Leslie, as Alfaretta threw her recent "treasure" ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... reading my document showing that he had neglected to fulfil his highest duty, his animal passion of murder was aroused, to kill the writer. That privilege was granted to him only under the condition, if he succeeds by taking a toad in possession, and by its instrumentality poisoning the water of the well at the house in which I used to stop. The water was poisoned; the prophetess and her husband with whom I boarded, when I was in that section of the country, were by drinking the water, taken sick, and they recovered as ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... wings, The toad has the road, the cricket sings: The bat is the rover, No bee on the clover, The day is ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... or younger boys would have liked a little. But Newton was at that age which comes sooner or later to every healthy boy, and the sight of a book which he was meant to read and ought to read was infinitely worse than the ugliest old toad that ever flops out of a hollow tree at dusk, spitting poison and blinking his devilish little eyes at you when you ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... bred her up myself with wondrous charge, Until she grew to be exceeding large, And waxed so wanton that I did abhor it, And put her out amongst my neighbours for it. The next is Lust, a hound that's kept abroad, 'Mongst some of mine acquaintance, but a toad Is not more loathsome: 'tis a cur will range Extremely, and is ever full of mange; And 'cause it is infectious, she's not wont To come among the rest, but when they hunt. Hate is the third, a hound both deep and long. His sire ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... inward pollution, that was my plague and my affliction. By reason of that, I was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad; and I thought I was so in God's eyes too. Sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain. I could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the Devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... not say anything half so amiable as good afternoon, but she took her departure. As she swept past the minister a large, plump toad, which Carl had secreted under the lounge, hopped out almost under her feet. Mrs. Davis gave a shriek and in trying to avoid treading on the awful thing, lost her balance and her parasol. She did not exactly fall, but she staggered and reeled across the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... day a toad, in fun, Said, "Pray which leg moves after which?" This raised her doubts to such a pitch She fell exhausted in the ditch, ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... your audience goes away without finding out what that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but, dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone of that story, and you are bound to get it—it flashes, it flames, it is the jewel in the toad's head—you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... discoursed.' {121} After extolling the beauty and virtue of his mistress above that of Aretino's Angelica, Petrarch's Laura, Catullus's Lesbia, and eight other far-famed objects of poetic adoration, Harvey suddenly denounces her in burlesque rhyme as 'a serpent in brood,' 'a poisonous toad,' 'a heart of marble,' and 'a stony mind as passionless as a block.' Finally he ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... The toad and frog are somewhat alike. Both come from eggs laid in the water, and both begin life as little ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... all the rest, the lovely, flexible chain of stones she had been holding to her breast that night when Harlenden surprised her coming from the garden into the veranda—the thing he had shaken from her hand into her lap as if it had been a toad. She remembered Harlenden, now, as she gazed into the iridescent shapes of light, seeming to see in their brilliant, shallow depths worlds of romance that every-day life knew not of. At last she caught the thing up and kissed it burningly, then pressed it ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... A toad came first, and sat blinking at us with the funniest airs imaginable. Then a robin-redbreast and two sparrows edged their way up to our table with great caution, winked at us with bright eyes, concluded we were trustworthy, ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... But we'll ferret him out yet. You are a keen hand, Mr Sharp, and will assist, I know. Yes, yes—it's some fellow that hates me—that I perhaps hate and loathe'—he added with sudden gnashing fierceness, and striking his hand with furious violence on the table—'as I do a spotted toad!' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... every word of it," said his listener with considerable satisfaction, adding as a special descriptive note of her own, "the old toad." ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... tuft-hunting, toad-eating, and other manifestations of accursed gentility—to say nothing of the Lord knows who's defiances of the proven truth before six hundred and fifty men—ARE expressing themselves every day. So, every day, the disgusted millions with this unnatural gloom are confirmed and hardened in the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... horse. It was, however, only after moments of attention that she found the place was far from being dead. Keen eyes and ears brought reward. Desert quail, as gray as the bare earth, were dusting themselves in a shady spot. A bee, swift as light, hummed by. She saw a horned toad, the color of stone, squatting low, hiding fearfully in the sand within reach of her whip. She extended the point of the whip, and the toad quivered and swelled and hissed. It was instinct with fight. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... children, and adding "Ex uno disce his associates Southey and Lamb." Again, in the first number of the Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine, August, 1798, was a picture by Gilray, representing the worshippers of Lepaux, wherein Lloyd and Lamb appeared as a toad and a frog reading their own Blank Verse, and Coleridge and Southey, as donkeys, flourish "Dactylics" and "Saphics." In September the federated poets were again touched upon in a parody of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... acquaintance of Prince Vanno, with the Princess-to-be. Everybody came, from a dowdy and perfectly charming German royalty down to poor old General Caradine, who had played roulette for twenty-five years, with the same live Mexican toad for a fetish; whose two great boasts were that he had learned the language of birds, and that he had fought a duel with a man for defaming Queen Mary of Scots. There were an English Foreign Secretary and a leader of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Zapotec guache, translated by Seler "frog or toad," is more likely a variant of gurache or ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Browne's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It was n't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,— Of "Norman's Woe" with its ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... perhaps nothing connected with it has given rise to so much controversy as the origin of this celebrated charge." It has been at various times asserted to be an Iris, a Lily, a sword-hilt, a spearhead, and a toad, or to be simply the Fleur de St. Louis. Adhuc sub judice lis est—and it is never likely to be satisfactorily settled. I need not therefore dwell on it, especially as my present business is to settle not what the Fleur-de-luce meant in the arms of France, but what it meant in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... again, and Joe sprang to his feet precipitately; but judge of the loathing he felt when he saw what species of creature had shared his couch—a toad!—but a toad five inches in length, a monstrous, repulsive specimen of vermin that sat there staring at him with huge round eyes. Joe felt his stomach revolt at the sight, and, regaining a little strength from the intensity of his repugnance, he rushed at the top of his speed and plunged ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... Burglar, shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands, palms upward, so that he looked like a gigantic toad, "—that indeed is so very, very sad! My heart mourns over it. But how could it be avoided? Those foolish people would not lie down, would not be still. Their conduct was directly contrary to my system; see section 417, chapter 93, in my 'Great ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... the intuition of love, he had read the processes of her self-conquest at the time of Dick's marriage. But here was a new possibility. Could it be that this fair and delicate creature was now to be enwoofed by Sebastian Early, whom at this juncture Ellery characterized to himself as a "fat toad"? He made up his mind that it would not do to trust, as he had been doing, to time to stand his friend. He must also ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... himself invisible, strikes Mime with a whip, until the latter is half dead. Wotan and Loge, hearing his complaints, promise to help him. Alberich, coming forth again, is greatly flattered by Wotan and dexterously led on to show his might. He first changes himself into an enormous snake and then into a toad. Wotan quickly puts his foot on it, while Loge seizes the Tarnhelm. Alberich becoming suddenly visible in his real shape, is bound and led away captive. The gods return to the mountain-heights of the second scene, where Alberich ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... became frightened. I could not walk very well nor very far, for every lump of earth in my way seemed a mountain, every blade of grass a tree and every grain of sand a rocky boulder. For several days I stumbled around in an agony of fear. Once a tree toad nearly gobbled me up, and if I ran out from the shelter of the bushes the gulls and cormorants swooped down upon me. Finally I decided to eat another berry and become nothing at all, since life, to one as small as I was, ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... big Stetson to his high boots he was typically the big, strong man of Alaska, the Conqueror of the Wild. But his mouth was grim as granite, and his black eyes hard and repellent as those of a toad. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... umbrellas began to file out of the school door. The street looked as if it had grown a monster crop of shiny black toad-stools. But it was the only sign of life that the neighborhood showed for the rest of the day. The storm was too violent for even the big boys and girls to brave. A very long afternoon went by. Not a customer came into the shop. Maida ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... you think, sir? She picked up a toad which had had its paw crushed and carried it to her room and has put it in her washbasin and bandaged it as if it were a man. If that is not profanation I should like to know ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... "Thou ugly toad," said the woman to the boy, "did I not bid thee make a fire an hour ago? and now, here there is not so much as a spark to roast the fowls withall, and they to be basted for the lord Baron's supper. Where hast thou been for ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... Champignions in fricase, or Mushrooms, which is all one thing; they are called also Fungi, commonly in English Toad Stools. ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... of his burden. In other species the croaking sacs of the males, which were previously used for amatory callings, become enlarged to form cradles for the young. There are also instances of the female co-operating with the male in this care of offspring. Thus in the Surinam toad the male spreads the ova on the back of the female, where skin cavities form in which the tadpoles develop. In other cases the eggs are carried in the dorsal pouches of the females. It would almost ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of system had done that for his lordship to which his fortitude was inadequate. He was at least as cool, and as intrepid, as myself; and bowed to me with the utmost ease and civility. To return his bow was infinitely more repulsive than taking a toad in my hand: yet to forbear would have been a violation of the first principles of the behaviour of a gentleman. I therefore reluctantly and formally complied. I hope the reader remembers how earnestly I condemn this want of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... my mind like a toad. Somebody had shown me a paragraph in a scandal-loving American paper about the "change of heart" Ed Caspian had undergone with his change of purse. "Oh, he can't be allowed to do anything of that sort for Miss Moore," I said quickly. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... at the tents. people do not charge very high for whatever they have to spare, for they do not like to haul it. [June 17—65th day] The roads still sandy; we are about 100 ms. above Ft. Laramie saw a horned frog[59] which appears to be the link between the toad and the terapin, or mud turtle; it is about the size of a small toad, his body very flat & round, light colored but specked with red & black specs; has two knots, or horns on his head, a short peaked tail, & crawles around very lively, but ...
— Across the Plains to California in 1852 - Journal of Mrs. Lodisa Frizzell • Lodisa Frizell
... I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my political heresies, I look up to thee, as doth a toad through the iron-barred lucarne of a pestiferous dungeon, to the cloudless glory of a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, When shall my name be the quotation of the wise, and my ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... often takes me by surprise. On all such occasions I think of a scene at the University, where, in the midst of a grave discussion on the possibility of Absolute Motion, a scholar said he had seen a rock splitopen, from which sprang a toad, who could not be supposed to have any knowledge of the external world, and consequently his motion must have been absolute. The learned Professor, who presided on that occasion, was hardly more startled and astonished, than was our learned Professor, five ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the columella was a long business, but it grew clearer as young frogs of various ages were examined.] "Don't be aggravated with yourself," [he writes to Parker in July,] "it's tough work, this here Frog." [And on August 5:] "I have worked over Toad and I have worked over Frog, and I tell an obstinate man that s.h.m. [suprahyomandibular] is a figment—or a vessel, whichever said obstinate man pleases." [The same letter contains what he calls his final views on the columella, but by ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother its hinder parts. 'Tis the demon Sidragasum who hath the power to make ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... into a troubled sleep, throughout which the drawn twitch of muscle seemed an accent on every word of ill-omen I had ever spelt out of the alphabet of fear. If my body rested, my brain was an open chamber for any toad of ugliness that listed to ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the toad does not come of bad blood; he is related to some of the best families. The Duc de Lauzun is his uncle, and Biron his nephew. He is, nevertheless, unworthy of the honour which was conferred on him; for he was only a captain in the King's Guard. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sinner, "it's hard to say what's best,—powder of toad's bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder's fat. The safest thing ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... answered Richard, who was always as eager as a travelling salesman to recommend his wares. "There is an awfully ingenious little spell I can show you, if you happen to have a telephone book and a compass and a toad's heart and a hair from a black goat's beard about you. Or again, if you stand on a sea-beach at low tide on Christmas night with the moon at your back and a wax candle in your left hand, and write upon the sand the name—by the way, who is it ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... say that. It will break her heart! But you must go now, my brave one. I will talk to the red toad!" ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... didn't have a tail!" exclaimed the child. "Neither toad-frogs nor bull-frogs have tails. I thought everybody ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... going, would not let her go, and no threats or entreaties could move them. Then John Dietrich remembered that the little people cannot bear an evil smell; and one day he happened to break a large stone, out of which jumped a toad, which gave him power to do what he pleased with the dwarfs, for the sight or smell of a toad causes them pain beyond all bearing. So he sent for the chiefs of the dwarfs, and bade them let Elizabeth go. But they refused; and then he ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... before the new moon, in the month of May, every year, whether it happens by night or by day, the afflicted persons assemble at the doctor's residence, where they are supplied, by him, with the hind legs of a toad! yes, gentle reader a toad—don't start—enclosed in a small bag (accompanied, I believe, with some verbal charm, or incantation,) and also a lotion and salve of the doctor's preparation. The bag containing the legs of the reptile is worn suspended from the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... up most of the night writing poetry," he remarked, "and I have just brought you one or two specimens. The first one is called 'The Ode of a Toad.' Perhaps I had better read it to you. My writing is rather peculiar," and he began ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... begg'd leave to observe, That reports had been spread which he did not deserve; To say he was "fretful," was using him ill, He would prove the reverse to his very last quill; Though he now bristled up at the simple idea, This was often, with him, but a symptom of fear. As he spoke, a poor toad, who had sate quite aloof In a hovel of earth, with a stone for a roof, Now slowly, on tiptoe, crept out of his hole, And into the midst of the company stole; The quadrupeds gazed as the reptile drew nigh, Half afraid ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... definition of the beautiful by saying, “Ask a toad what his ideas of beauty are. He will indicate the particular female toad he happens to admire and praise her goggle-eyes and yellow belly as the perfection of beauty!” A negro from Guiana will make ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... never thought of that. Also I should not have spoken so roughly, but I have had such a shock that I feel inclined to treat you like—like—a toad under a harrow. So please be sympathetic, and don't misunderstand me, or I don't know what I shall say." Then by way of making amends, Mary put her arms round his neck and gave him a kiss "all of her own accord," ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... head! And but for me, to parts unknown Thou from this earth hadst long since fled. What dost thou here through cave and crevice groping? Why like a horned owl sit moping? And why from dripping stone, damp moss, and rotten wood Here, like a toad, suck in thy food? Delicious pastime! Ah, I see, Somewhat of ...
— Faust • Goethe
... England! Past weald and down, past field and hedgerow, croft and orchard, cottage and mansion, now over the chalk with its spinneys of beech and fir, now over the clay with its forests of oak and elm. The friends of one's childhood, purple scabious and yellow toad-flax, seemed to nod their heads in welcome; and the hedgerows were festive with garlands of bryony and Old Man's Beard. The blanching willows rippled in the breeze, and the tall poplars whispered with every wind. I looked down the length of the saloon, and everywhere I saw the blithe ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... of sacrificing some human being to be buried under the foundation of a castle for the pacifying of the ancient gods. And all of this uncanny terror was somehow connected with a hill some distance away toward the forest-clad mountains, where a low brown-tiled cottage crouched like a toad, under a poplar whose leaves were ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... France and Scotland who came behind, rode the Earl of Avondale and his five sons, noble young men, and most unlikely to have sprung from such a stock. James the Gross rode a broad Clydesdale mare, a short, soft unwieldy man, sitting squat on the saddle like a toad astride a roof, and glancing slily sideways out of the pursy recesses of ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... be able to find the trim of the vessel, and lay her about on t'other tack. For my own part, I have had many a consort in my time, that is, in the way of good fellowship, and I always made a shift to ware 'em at one time or another. But this headstrong toad will neither obey the helm nor the sheet; and for aught I know, will founder where ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... horse had died, so he skinned it, and threw it behind the threshing-floor, intending to bury it next day. He saw a great toad creep under it as he went away. At night he went into the barn to sleep, and hearing a noise outside, kept watch for thieves; but, to his horror, he saw the door slowly open, and his dead horse enter. The ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... met Mr. Hop Toad and his wife out for a stroll," added Limpy-toes. "Yes, and we saw Pete and Dickie Grasshopper, and Madame ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... Thracians; Canidia, having interwoven her hair and uncombed head with little vipers, orders wild fig-trees torn up from graves, orders funeral cypresses and eggs besmeared with the gore of a loathsome toad, and feathers of the nocturnal screech-owl, and those herbs, which lolchos, and Spain, fruitful in poisons, transmits, and bones snatched from the mouth of a hungry bitch, to be burned in Colchian flames. But Sagana, tucked up for expedition, sprinkling the waters of Avernus all ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... its shape the Globe-fish, and from its skin the "Sea-hedgehog"; it is covered with sharp thorns, and has the power, by swallowing air, of so greatly increasing its size (without sharing the fate of the poor toad in AEsop's Fable) that it not only can rise to the surface of the water, but float as long as it pleases. Then there are the blue Flying-herrings, with long fins, which you would see if you took a voyage to Australia. These poor little creatures have enemies both in birds and fishes. When ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... forsaken Sabrina heard such things she burned with envy and jealousy. Secretly she tried to conjure the pair, to no avail. That had been by wishing them ill. She meant to try again. One day she went far into the woods and caught a toad. She put it in a bottle. "There you are, Mistress Talithie Tipton. I've named the toad for you!" she gloated as she made fast the stopper. "You'll perish there. That's what you'll do. Didn't old ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... rather be a toad, And live upon the vapor of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing I love For ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Christ, and the Spirit, and all good things." All the misdoings of his earlier years rose up against him. There they were, and he could not rid himself of them. He thought that no one could be so bad as he was; "not even the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in his own eyes than a toad." What then must God think of him? Despair seized fast hold of him. He thought he was "forsaken of God and given up to the Devil, and to a reprobate mind." Nor was this a transient fit of despondency. "Thus," he writes, "I continued a long while, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... a superstition in Cheshire that hooping cough may be cured by holding a toad for a few moments with its head within the mouth of the person affected. I heard only the other day of a cure by this somewhat disagreeable process; the toad was said to have caught the disease, which in this instance proved fatal to it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... or furniture factory or anything he wanted to tackle, but he wouldn't have it. Said he wanted to work in somebody else's shop to get the discipline. Discipline? That boy never had any discipline in his life! I've kept my nose to the grindstone ever since I was knee-high to a toad just so that boy wouldn't have to worry about his daily bread, and now, damn it all, he runs a carpenter shop on the top floor of a house that stands me, lot, furniture, and all, nearly a hundred thousand dollars! I can't talk to everybody about this; my wife and daughters don't want any ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... armed against the animals, so the animals are armed against each other. Many of the insects and reptiles are extremely poisonous; the greater the heat of their habitat, the more dangerous are their bites. The horned toad, while not poisonous, is protected by having horny spines upon its head and back. The little rattlesnake known as the "side-winder" is perhaps the most dangerous of all, although the tarantula, centipede, and scorpion are formidable foes. The Gila monster, long believed to be so dangerous, ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... form a circle, hands joined. One toad stands in the center holding a rope, at the end of which is tied a bean bag. The center toad swings the rope first in a small circle gradually enlarging the radius until it comes in direct line with the feet of the toads ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... and shine of sea, Browne's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It was n't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,— Of "Norman's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... she peers closely along the path. Starting back with a cry of alarm, she calls and my mother hurries out. She, too, examines the ground, and at last points out to me a long striped snake with a poor, shrieking little tree-toad in its mouth. The horror of this scene fixes it in my mind. My mother beats the serpent with a stick. The mangled victim hastens away, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... her self-conquest at the time of Dick's marriage. But here was a new possibility. Could it be that this fair and delicate creature was now to be enwoofed by Sebastian Early, whom at this juncture Ellery characterized to himself as a "fat toad"? He made up his mind that it would not do to trust, as he had been doing, to time to stand his friend. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the tongues one hears, Dutch seldom, French occasionally. The Potter bull with the wooden legs is stared at by hundreds. As a picture painted by a very young man it is noteworthy. The head of the beast is nobly depicted. But what of the remainder of this insignificant composition with its toad and cows, its meaningless landscape? The Weenix swan is richer in paint texture. The Holbeins are—two anyhow—of splendid quality. Of the Rubenses it is better to defer mention until Antwerp is reached. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... are own cousins to them; they are the grandchildren of old Mr. Tree Toad! and they are called Hylas!" said Jerry Muskrat, laughing and rubbing his hands in great glee. "I told you that if you used your eyes, you'd ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess
... love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face—when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird—Why? Because it lives and feels; because it is helpless and harmless? A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... "poor Tom that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water [newt]; ... swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog;" and "drinks the green mantle of the standing pool," was "whipped from tything to tything, and ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... She says she loathed him with an unspeakable horror from the first moment that her eyes met his revolting form. She says she saw a hideous toad once in a nasty pond, and she says that rather would she take that noisome reptile and clasp its slimy bosom to her own than tolerate one instant's touch from his (the ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... haunted spot. A legend killed it for a kindly home,— A grim estate, which every heir in turn Left to the orgies of the wind and rain, The newt, the toad, the spider, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... of calf, Hair of wolf and bones of toad, Blood of doves and hippomanes, Scarlet oak and bruised snake, Screech-owl's feathers and marrow of men— Men who have ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... a few of clay, which are figured in Squier and Davis's work, eleven are left unnamed by the authors as not being recognizable; nineteen are identified correctly, in a general way, as of a wolf, bear, heron, toad, &c.; sixteen are demonstrably wrongly identified, leaving but five of which the species is ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... back-boned animals next above the fishes is the Amphibians, which includes the frogs, toads, salamanders,[7] and their relatives. The name "amphibian" refers to two modes of life as shown by most of the frogs and toads. A good example is the Common Toad, whose eggs are laid in the water. These eggs hatch out not into toads, but into tadpoles, which have no legs and which breathe by means of gills, as the fishes do. They grow rapidly, develop a pair of hind legs and then a pair of front legs, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... around by himself in droves, stiff and uncomfortable as a Presbyterian Sunday-school, wishing every time his rapier galled his kibes or tangled his royal legs that he had remained comfortably dead in that dog-hole at St. Denis. There was entirely too much formality for fun. The next time New York's toad-eaters give a bal-masque they should disguise themselves as American sovereigns and their consorts. Of course it will be a trifle difficult for them to play the part of respectable people; but they will find even awkward effort in that direction refreshing, and calculated ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... All in a lump, Sits like a toad on the top of a stump. He stretches and sighs, And blinks with his eyes, Bats at the beetles and fights ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... batrachians—I am not a naturalist. But the impression created on their minds appeared to be that I was rather an odd person in the pulpit. When the time came to pull the old church down the toad-keepers were bidden to remove their pets, which they did with considerable reluctance. What became of them I do not know—I never inquired. I used to have a careful inspection made of the floor to make sure that these creatures were not ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... problematical animal, the toad-in-a-hole (literal, not culinary) has been one of the most familiar and interesting personages of contemporary folk-lore and popular natural history. From time to time he turns up afresh, with his own wonted perennial vigour, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... and then drops as a stone into the pool at his feet. Effets, saffron yellow bellied, with striped backs, swim in the ponds or crawl at their bottom. The natterjack, so rare elsewhere, differing from a toad in that it has a yellow band down its back, has here a paradise. It may be seen at eve perched on a stock of willow herb, or running—it does not hop—round the sundew, clearing the glutinous stamens of the flies that have been caught by them, and calling ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... seemed long before with recovered calmness the Admiral spoke. "Take the truth, then, from my lips, and bear it highly. As we had plotted so we did, but that vile toad, that engrained traitor, learning, we know not how, each jot and tittle of our plan and escaping by some secret way, sold us to disaster such as has not been since Fayal in the Azores! For on land we fought ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... public feeling which prevailed during the great war of the Revolution, and for some years after its termination. Gifford was deeply imbued with all the sentiments on public matters which prevailed in his time, and, as some people have a hatred of a cat, and others of a toad, so our friend felt uneasy when a Frenchman was named; and buckled on his armour of criticism whenever a Liberal or even a Whig was brought under his notice; and although in the present day there appears to be a greater indulgence to crime amongst judges and ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... muttered the old sinner, "it's hard to say what's best,—powder of toad's bone or the mixture of wormwood and adder's fat. The safest thing is to ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... beautiful than all the rest, the lovely, flexible chain of stones she had been holding to her breast that night when Harlenden surprised her coming from the garden into the veranda—the thing he had shaken from her hand into her lap as if it had been a toad. She remembered Harlenden, now, as she gazed into the iridescent shapes of light, seeming to see in their brilliant, shallow depths worlds of romance that every-day life knew not of. At last she caught the thing up and kissed it burningly, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... what's the difference what ye call the boat? At home, I was sometimes referred to as the Queen of the May, and again as the big toad that St. Patrick forgot to drive out of Ireland, but all agraad that I was as swate under one title as ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... entirely on insects and catch large quantities of them. It is estimated that a single toad is worth almost twenty dollars a year in a field or garden. English gardeners are said to pay high prices for them and to keep as many as possible in their gardens. Toads will eat almost any kind of insect, are absolutely harmless, ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... England—the four miles between Guildford and Godalming—or across "the most villainous spot God ever made," which was Hindhead, and listens to him praising the bean fields and the turnips here, and the oaks and acacias there, cursing the Wen-devils and place-men and pensioners, the reptiles, toad-eaters and tax-eaters, and yet the sheer honesty and affection of the man shine from every page. There never was such a mixture of execration and the scent of bean-blossom. But Rural Rides remains a book of the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... New Orleans paper writes: "Dick was only a big toad. The boys found him beside the road one day last summer when the June roses were in bloom, and triumphantly deposited him in one of the flower-beds, 'to eat the bugs and things off'n the pinks and pansies and rosemary; and, besides, you know, mamma, the other boys ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... art not to blame; Nor should it make us load With obloquy, and scorn, and shame The honest name of TOAD. ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... libelling. Many libels are written in this little world of ours unconsciously, and under many motives. Perhaps we said that before, but no matter. Sometimes a gloomy fellow, with a murderous cast of countenance, sits down doggedly to the task of blackening one whom he hates worse 'than toad or asp.' For instance, Procopius performs that 'labour of hate' for the Emperor Justinian, pouring oil into his wounds, but, then (as Coleridge expresses it in a 'neat' sarcasm), oil of vitriol. Nature must have meant ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... You asked the Lady Olive (I can speak As to a toad to you, my lord)—you asked Olive to be your ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... live; then the other. I am resolved that my life shall be a life. Not a black trance like the toad's, buried in marble; nor a long, slow death like yours in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... you mean, Toad," she answered, kicking him with her slippered foot. "I had to listen to your talk of love while we journeyed together, and before, but here I need not, and if you speak of it again you shall go living into that baker's oven. Oh! you have forgotten it, but I have a long ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... perhaps the wittiest of modern novelists. Of all the ladies who in later times have taken in hand the weapon of satire, her blade is certainly the most trenchant. A vapid lord or a purse-proud citizen, a money-hunting woman of fashion or a toad-eater, a humbug in short, male or female, and of whatsoever cast or quality he may be, will find his pretensions well castigated in some one or other of her brilliant pages; while scattered about in ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... feeds on small shrimps, climbs about the weeds like a lizard, and at times swims like a fish and is very rapid and strong in its motions. It swells out the membranes about the spot where its gills ought to be, so as to puff itself out like a toad when it takes water in: its colour resembles that of the common English frog, and it looks remarkably like one when it sits on a piece of weed, resting on its claws and puffing out its cheeks. There are several lines of red stripes at the bottom of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... desire that was raging in his blood, the desire to leap on Mercer and kill him. If Cardigan had reported his condition to Kedsty, it would have been different. He would have accepted the report as a matter of honorable necessity on Cardigan's part. But Mercer—a toad blown up by his own wind, a consummate fiend who would sell his best ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... into my mind like a toad. Somebody had shown me a paragraph in a scandal-loving American paper about the "change of heart" Ed Caspian had undergone with his change of purse. "Oh, he can't be allowed to do anything of that sort for Miss Moore," I said quickly. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... think it is a trait of character which is quite too much neglected in female education. It is not only lamentable, but pitiable, to see a female of twenty, thirty, or fifty years of age, shrinking at the sight of a spider, or a toad, even when there is not the smallest prospect of its coming within three yards of her. Nor is it as it should be, when a young woman, already eighteen or twenty years of age, has such a dread of pigs and cows, as to scream aloud at the sight of one in a field, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... in fine company. Thorndyke was a telepath and Officer Gruenwald was perceptive. They went as a team and gave me about as much chance to escape as if I'd been a horned toad sealed in a cornerstone. Gruenwald, of course, treated me as though my breath was deadly, my touch foul, and my presence evil. In Gruenwald's eyes, the only difference between me and Medusa the Gorgon was that looking at me did not turn him to stone. He kept at least one eye ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... toad-stool of smoke. Out of the heart of it came the clash and cry of torn waters. All else was still, save for the scream ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... play poker, and the game being made small enough to suit him, he came in and won about two dollars, which made him swell up like a toad, and declared: ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... with rain, for rustic observation, interesting as it is, is essentially unscientific. The honeysuckle is useless to the bee. The slow-worm, which appears to be for slay-worm, strike-serpent,[76] is perfectly harmless, and the toad, though ugly, is not venomous, nor does he bear a jewel ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... bitterness infused into it. At no time was this truth ever more strikingly exemplified than at present, when a separation seems to have taken place between satire and wit, which leaves the former like the toad, without the "jewel in its head;" and when the hands, into which the weapon of personality has chiefly fallen, have brought upon it a stain and disrepute, that will long keep such writers as those of the Rolliad and Antijacobin from touching ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... is forbidden. Meanwhile a large wooden trough, richly adorned with arabesques and carvings of all sorts, was hung immediately under the snouts of the bears; on one side of the trough was carved in relief a bear, on the other side a toad. When the carcases were being cut up, each leg was laid on the ground in front of the bears, as if to ask their leave, before being placed in the kettle; and the boiled flesh was fished out of the kettle with an iron hook, and set in the trough before the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... my meals in de house at de white folks table, after dey done et. Iffen I couldn' sit in de marster's chair, I'd swell up like a toad. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... said Bob. "I fancied from your letters that life with the she-dragon was one huge joke, and that Papa was nice and companionable, and the kids, sweet little darlings who ate from your hand. And all the time you were just the poor old toad ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... juncture the officious burgomasters, who had heard of the arrival of mysterious despatches, came marching in a body into the room, with a legion of schepens and toad-eaters at their heels, and abruptly demanded a perusal of the letter. This was too much for the spleen of Peter Stuyvesant. He tore the letter in a thousand pieces—threw it in the face of the nearest burgomaster—broke his pipe over the head of the next—hurled ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the door was flung open, and the young man found himself facing a big toad sitting in the centre of a number of young toads. The big toad addressed him, asking ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the handle being the line of the sky, and sometimes painted with the rainbow figure. Now the decorations are a trifle more complex. We may readily perceive that they represent tadpoles (Fig. 558, b b), dragonflies (Fig: 558, c c), with also the frog or toad (Fig. 558); all this is of easy interpretation. As the tadpole frequents the pools of spring time he has been adopted as the symbol of spring rains; the dragon-fly hovers over pools in summer, hence typifies the rains of summer; and ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... don't deserve to live. Well, the crows will soon have you! You Egyptians believe in a judgment of the dead; what defence can you make before the court of Osiris[99] for being privy to a foul murder? You'll come back to earth as a fly, or a toad, or a dung-beetle, to pay the penalty for ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... curious fact that toads are so numerous in the island of Jersey, that they have become a term of reproach for its inhabitants, the word 'Crapaud' being frequently applied to them; while in the neighbouring island of Guernsey not a toad is to be found, though they have frequently been imported. Indeed, certain other islands have always been privileged in this respect. Ireland is free from venomous animals, of course by the aid of St. Patrick. The same was affirmed of Crete in olden times, being the birthplace ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... interior was nearly covered with inscriptions, one dated 1720 and some farther back than that. We had a drink of water from the well, but afterwards, when sitting on the seat, saw at the bottom of the well a great black toad, which we had not noticed when drinking the water. The sight of it gave us a slight attack of the horrors, for we had a particular dread of toads. We saw at the side of the road a large house which was ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... road to Mamble And take another road To as good a place as Mamble Be it lazy as a toad; Who travels Worcester county Takes any place that comes When April tosses bounty To the cherries ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Janice!" broke in Walky. "'Must' is a hard driver, I know. But I tell ye, we couldn't win through the drif's. Why, I been as slow as a toad funeral gettin' up here from High Street. The ox teams won't be out breakin' the paths before noon, and they won't get out of town ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... steps: here shalt thou rest Upon this holy bank, no deadly Snake Upon this turf her self in folds doth make. Here is no poyson for the Toad to feed; Here boldly spread thy hands, no venom'd Weed Dares blister them, no slimy Snail dare creep Over thy face when thou art fast asleep; Here never durst the babling Cuckow spit, No slough of falling Star did ever hit Upon this bank: let this thy Cabin be, This ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Morrison to Jim and Phil, as he left them at the end of the avenue, "I used to like Brenchfield, but I don't know what's come over me lately with him. When he laid his hand on me a few minutes ago, I felt as if a wet toad was squatting on the back of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... theory with regard to the French Revolution, as having been the great cause of degeneration in murder. "Very soon, sir," he used to say, "men will have lost the art of killing poultry: the very rudiments of the art will have perished!" In the year 1811 he retired from general society. Toad-in-the-hole was no more seen in any public resort. We missed him from his wonted haunts—nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he. By the side of the main conduit his listless length at noontide he would stretch, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... sixteenth-century hand. Not being very familiar with alchemical literature, Mr Wraxall spends much space which he might have spared in setting out the names and beginnings of the various treatises: The book of the Phoenix, book of the Thirty Words, book of the Toad, book of Miriam, Turba philosophorum, and so forth; and then he announces with a good deal of circumstance his delight at finding, on a leaf originally left blank near the middle of the book, some writing of Count Magnus himself headed 'Liber nigrae peregrinationis'. It is true that ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... incautious flies: The sheep were seen at early light Cropping the meads with eager bite. Though June, the air is cold and chill; The mellow blackbird's voice is still. The glow-worms, numerous and bright, Illum'd the dewy dell last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping, and crawling o'er the green. The frog has lost his yellow vest, And in a dingy suit is dressed. The leech, disturb'd, is newly risen, Quite to the summit of his prison. The whirling winds the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays; My dog, so alter'd in ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... more parsons than one. If your la'ship hath such a violent aversion, and hates the young gentleman so very bad, that you can't bear to think of going into bed to him; for to be sure there may be such antipathies in nature, and one had lieverer touch a toad than the flesh of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... got back to the picknic old Mrs. Bolton had had a spell and the minister and Decon Sawyer was lifting her into Miss Susan Parkinsons caryall to drive her home. sum feller had throwed a teeny little bull toad in her lap. huh i shood think that was a prety thing to have a spell for. i never see ennyone have a spell. i wish i had got there in time to see it. Beany sed it was grate fun ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... work hard! He pulled away the [stones] till he could see it, between two big rocks, but couldn't get his [hand] in. So he took a [stick] and poked. At last, out rolled the quarter—and out hopped a [toad]! Jack laughed, but [Jimmy Crow] was so surprised he flapped his [wings] ...
— Jimmy Crow • Edith Francis Foster
... manner of use but to make work; what upsets me is the way he hid his nature. Time and again I've been good to that boy. He looked all black grin and frizzled head, nothing bad in him you'd say—and then! It's like opening a cupboard and finding a toad, and there's Dinah going on like a fool; she's crying because he's going, not because he gave me impudence. Rachel's the same, and I'm just going now to the kitchen to give them a talking to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... wounded or ill. Yet the daughter has guessed aright, and I have kept the 'Honourables' waiting, that I might tell you the news myself; for what may not such tidings become whilst passing from lip to lip! It is a toad, a very ugly toad, and I would not permit a dragon to be brought into the house to you poor things ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gems which have not their fellows anywhere, gems which have not even a name, and the value of which is incalculable. I have jewels engendered by the thunder, jewels taken from the heart of the Arabian deer. I have jewels cut from the brain of a toad, and from the eyes of serpents. I have jewels which are authentically known to have fallen from the moon. Well, we will select the rarest, and have a pair of slippers encrusted with them, and in these slippers you shall dance for me, in a room ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... hour, a Mexican goatherd was driving his flock. That was the only sign of life to be seen or felt, if you except the noise of locusts in the mesquite near by and the spasmodic progress of a horned toad in the sand outside ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... was the secret of little Raymond's pugnacious front and Weir's pompous air; and Ken realized that the same reason accounted for his own attitude toward them. He wanted very much to tell Raymond that he was a little grouch and Weir that he looked like a puffed-up toad. All the same Ken was not blind to Weir's handsome appearance. The sturdy youngster had an immense head, a great shock of bright brown hair, flashing gray eyes, and a clear ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... was quite as bad. Mother gave him a book with very nice pictures, particularly of beasts. The chief reason she got it for him was that there was such a very good picture of a toad, and Chris is so fond of toads. For months he made friends with one in the garden. It used to crawl away from him, and he used to creep after it, talking to it, and then it used to half begin to crawl up the garden ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... mortals in that hour. A heavy fragrance fell through the dusk out of the thick of the horse-chestnut tree. A load of hay went by, the rack creaking, the driver sunk well out of sight. He heard the dreaming note of the tree toad; frogs croaked in the lush meadow, water babbled under the crazy wooden sidewalk.—The meadow was one vast pulse of fireflies. He felt this industrious flame enter ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... creature led them on to the water's edge, to the shores of the lake, where it had its nest. Arrived there, the Kaiser soon saw the cause of the serpent's seeking him, for its nest, which was full of eggs, was occupied by a hideous toad of ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... colours and habits it is evident that he observed, in 1833, an excellent example of warning colouring in a little South American toad (Phryniscus nigricans). He described it in a letter to Henslow, written from Monte Video, Nov. 24, 1832: "As for one little toad, I hope it may be new, that it may be christened 'diabolicus.' Milton must allude to this very ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... not see the poor dirty grey toad lying panting and frightened on the pathway, but Miss Grace did, and stooped and picked the poor thing up, and carrying it into her garden, placed it in a nice cool shady corner, ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... crathure, is it? You'd betther ask me to love a to'd"— for so Michael would pronounce the word 'toad.' "What is there to love about him, but skin and bone! I'd as soon love a ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... by our place the now! Aye, Mary's home from school—the little toad— And Jeck is likely bringing in the cow, Away from pasture, down the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was brought up at Ardayre as though he were the heir, and poor John turned out of things. He came to Eton three years before I left, but even there they could not turn him into the outside semblance of a gentleman. I loathed the little toad, and he loathed me—and the sickening part of the thing is that if John does not have a son, by the English law of entail Ferdinand comes into Ardayre, and will be the head of the family. Old Sir James died about five years ago, always protesting ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... a slimy but harmless toad or a stinging fly? It seemed ridiculous, contemptible and pitiable to think of hate in connection with the melancholy figure of this discomfited intriguer, this fallen ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thou hadst with thy neck, I wish it may not be ominous: but I think thou seemest not to be in so enterprising a way as formerly; and yet, merry or sad, thou seest a rake's neck is always in danger, if not from the hangman, from his own horse. But, 'tis a vicious toad, it seems; and I think thou shouldst never venture upon his back again; for 'tis a plaguy thing for rider and horse ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... know her as well as I. Ecod! I know every inch about her; and there's not a more bitter cantankerous toad in all Christendom. ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thief—just huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; 340 A toad-like lump of limb and feature, With mind, and ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... profit would do well though. Come, here is a girl; look well upon her; it is a mettled toad, I can tell you that: She will make notable work betwixt two sheets, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... into the darkened sitting-room and sank on to a black haircloth sofa, while Samantha ushered the wanderers into the sunny kitchen, muttering to herself: "Wall, I vow! travelin' over the country all alone, 'n' not knee-high to a toad! They're send in' out awful young tramps this season, but they sha'n't go away ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the magnificent trees and rare flowers which surrounded it, only briers and thorns, nettles and thistles, could be seen. Terrified and most desolate, she tried to force her way in the midst of the ruins, to seek some knowledge of her kind friends. A large Toad issued from a pile of stones, ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if to ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... anxious that your time of servitude should be over. That child seems worse than ever. I never knew anything like her manners to-day. Three of the servants have given notice, and even cook was in violent hysterics in the kitchen, for she found that Irene had put a live toad into the bread-pan. She said she can stand most things, but that toads are beyond bearing. The thing foamed at her in a most terrible manner, and the consequence is, all the bread had to be thrown away, as no one can possibly attempt to eat it. Really, ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... others, where openings appeared towards the sky, the ground was strewed with various seeds and roots, that of the bread-nut especially being in great abundance. Reptiles, too, of curious shape were seen scuttling away, disturbed by the intruders—toad, snake, and lizard forms, all curiously covered with incrustations. The parts of the cavern open to the air were delightfully cool, and Lieutenant Belt proposed that they should send for their provisions and lunch in one of the larger apartments. ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... over its yellowishgray body, are small, horn-like protuberances that give the little fellow a very peculiar appearance. Ah, I know who he is. I have heard of him, and have seen his picture in books. I am happy to make his acquaintance. He is "Prickey," the famed horned toad of Nevada. On this mountain spur, between the Golconda miningcamp and Iron Point, is the only place I have seen him on the tour. He is a very interesting little creature, more lizard than frog, perfectly harmless; and his little bead-like ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... onslaught, had turned and looked at the door which had closed behind him with a briskness which seemed to say "Good riddance," and muttered, thinking of the clerk's one sanguine suggestion: "Personality! I might as well be a hop-toad." ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... came in sight of the sinister triangular building which crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, Vanderlyn's heart failed him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed lying there exposed to the careless, morbid glances of idle sightseers to whom the Morgue is one of the sights of Paris, ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... mistake (a high authority informs me) in the explanation given in the dictionary. Toad-flax is certainly not a "mushroom," neither does it "stink." Is the Welsh word applied to both equivocally as distinct {468} objects? In Withering's Arrangement of British Plants, 7th edit., vol. iii., p. 734., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... head. "Yes," she whispered. "After all, I have some pride, you know. You mustn't presume to be the butterfly preaching contentment to the toad in the dust." ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... to sit on it like a dam' toad in a hole. Thank you; and what about the shovel, eh? He always had a queer way of ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... monkey, which signifies louse catcher or hunter Ahnemoosh, n. a dog Aasebun, n. a raccoon Aayabegoo, n. an ant Aayanee, n. opossum Ahzhahwahmaig, n. a salmon Ahshegun, n. rock-bass Ahgwahdahsheh, n. sun-fish Ahwahsesee, n. cat-fish Ahmahkahkee, n. a toad Ahgoonaqua, n. tree-toad Ahndaig, n. a raven Ahshahgeh, n. a crane Ahsegenak, n. a black-bird Ahjegahdashib, n. water-hen Ahsenesekab, n. gravel Ahkik, n. a kettle Ahbewh, n. a paddle Ahzod, n. poplar Ahneshenahbay, n. an Indian man Apahgeeshemoog, n. west Ahahwa, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield
... step gingerly, carry perfumed handkerchiefs, use big words, talk about parties, but who would be quite at a loss how to use a hoop or a jump rope—little pale, candy-fed creatures, with lustreless eyes, flabby limbs, and no more life than a toad imbedded in a rock,—little tailor and milliner "lay figures," stiff, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... Reuben. "Time was you'd ha crawled to him. Now any snotty little toad can make game ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... 'mad-Tom,'" he continued in answer to the boy's questioning look, "is a small catfish with spines. Most boys in riverside villages have their hands all cut up by 'mad-Toms.' O' course there are scorpion-fish an' toad-fishes in tropical waters, an' their poison will cripple a man for a while, but there's ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... brown as a toad's back, was as prideful and full of power as old King Nebuchadneisher; and how to exhibit all his purple and fine linen, he aye thought and better thought, till at last the happy determination came over his mind like a flash of lightning, to invite the bailies, deacons, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... drunken women. Then there would have been one family exquisitely happy instead of two struggling against misery. I would have made the rose stem downy, and put all the thorns on the thistles. I would have gouged out the jewel from the toad's head, and given the peacock the nightingale's voice, and not set everything so ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... fairy-tale is bad enough, but, for evil looks, the Octopus is worse still. With his tough, brownish skin, knobbed like the toad's back, his large staring eyes, his parrot's beak, and ugly bag of a body, the Octopus is a horrid-looking creature. Add to this eight long arms twisting and writhing like snakes, and you have an idea of the most hideous inhabitant ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... contretemps, for presently Miss JESSIMINA uttered the complaint that two strangers were regarding herself and Miss SPINK with the brazen eyes of a sheep, and even making personal comments on my nationality, which rendered me like toad under ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... father is dreaming of!" she said one day, when she had sat for some time looking at Dolly, who was drawing. "He seems to think it quite natural that you should live down here at this cottage, year in and year out, like a toad in a hole; with no more life or society. We might as well be shut up in a nunnery, only then there would be more of us. I never heard of a nunnery ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... whilst others pretend that cancers may be cured by the application of living toads to them; and a man has been known to swallow one of these abominations for a wager, taking care, however, to follow this horrid meal by an immediate and copious draught of oil. But the very glance of the toad has been supposed fatal; of its entrails fancied poisonous potions have been concocted; and for magical purposes it was believed extremely efficacious; a precious stone was asserted to be found in its head, invaluable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others into a pygmy; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils and angels cannonading each other in heaven! ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... bats. And, as if to make the case still stronger, these forlornly created species of bats sometimes differ from all other bats in the world. But can we, as reasonable men, suppose that the Deity has chosen, without any apparent reason, never to create any frog, toad, newt, or mammal on any oceanic island, save only such species as are able to fly? Or, if we go so far as to say,—"There may have been some hidden reason why batrachians and quadrupeds should not have been created on oceanic ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... the pleasure of making an extract from an article[24] from the pen of that accomplished scholar, and well-known enthusiast in bee-culture, Henry K. Oliver, Esq. "We add a few words respecting the enemies of bees. The mouse, the toad, the ant, the stouter spiders, the wasp, the death-head moth, (Sphinx atropos,) and all the varieties of gallinaceous birds, have, each and all, "a sweet tooth," and like, very well, a dinner of raw bee. But ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... met him for the next three days after that he'd be so puffed up, like a toad, with importance and low remarks about woman that, at last, I just ignored him, pretending I hadn't the least curiosity about his evil secret. It hurt his feelings when I quit pestering him about it, but he'd been outraging mine right along; so ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... contents of that modern classic. The subsequent explanations lasted several hours. In fact, it is probable that the master does not understand the facts of the case thoroughly even now. It is true that he called him a 'loathsome, slimy, repulsive toad', but even this seems to fall short of the ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... was popularly supposed to be part-owner of the Excelsior, was recognized, and alternately caressed and hated as their superior. A majority of the male passengers, owning no actual or prospective matrimonial subjection to those charming toad-eaters, I am afraid continued to enjoy a mild and debasing equality among themselves, mitigated only by the concessions of occasional gallantry. To them, Mrs. Brimmer was a rather pretty, refined, well-dressed ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... and peacocks, while the Fairy who sat in it was beautiful as a sunbeam; but the other was drawn by bats and ravens, and contained a frightful little Dwarf, who was dressed in a snake's skin, and wore a great toad upon her head for a hood. The chariots met with a frightful crash in mid-air, and the Princess looked on in breathless anxiety while a furious battle took place between the lovely Fairy with her golden lance, and the hideous little Dwarf and her rusty pike. But ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... concealment of great stalks and vine-covered rocks. He pointed toward the open ground where they had been a few moments before. The tree-eater was out in full view. Its flabby, barrel-like body was squatted like that of some unearthly, giant toad, on massive hind legs. It sat erect, its forelegs hung in air, as a hoarse, snarling cry came from the cave. The great head, perched on the long leathery neck, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Toad are cousins. Of course you know that without being told. Everybody does. But not everybody knows that they were born in the same place. They were. Yes, Sir, they were. They were born in the Smiling Pool. Both had long tails ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... no accounting for tastes—but then he should have remembered that all the rattlesnakes in the valley couldn't have raised a single dose of quinine between them, and that the most sociable horned toad in the world, and the most obliging one, couldn't fry a sick man's pork, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... was but thinking how I bit into his hand. Sooner would I bite living toad or poisoned snake. Oh, I shall loathe my lips forever! But you—how brave you were, and how quick! How meek for yourself, and how bold for a stranger! If I were a man, I should wish to do ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me as a fool! I have the water that the Dry Valley needs. I can go on with the thing which they have tried to do, I can whip them at their own game, playing mine open with the cards on the table. I can refuse to be the toad under the stone; I can make my fight to have my rights. Against opposition that has been underhanded I can offer opposition that is a man's answer to a challenge. It is they, not I, who began the trouble. Had Martin Leland come ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... his bed. One would see the warty toads squatted in the soil two or three feet below the surface, in the same way. Probably not till April will the spell which the winter has put upon them be broken. I have seen a toad go into the ground in late fall. He literally elbows his way ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... as the poets call them, are very different animals from the "turpissima bestia" that accompanies the itinerant organ-grinder or grins in the Zoological Gardens of London. Milton has made his hero, Satan, assume the forms of a cormorant, a toad, and a serpent, and I cannot see that this creation of semi-divine Vanars, or monkeys, is ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... till One day a toad, in fun, Said, "Pray which leg moves after which?" This raised her doubts to such a pitch She fell exhausted in the ditch, Not ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... paws upon the road. Straight silent pines rose here and there around; A dull stream on the left side hardly flowed; A black snake through the sluggish waters wound. Hark, the night raven! see the crawling toad! She thinks how dark will be the moonless night, How feeblest ray is ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... as if there were no Maggie in existence. Seeing this, Maggie lingered at a distance looking like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area, with an iron grating over him. Still Lucy wished Maggie to enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she would doubtless find a name for the toad, and say what had ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of this war, as the master mind of all the ages said of adversity, that "its uses are sweet," even though they be as a precious jewel shining in the head of an ugly and venomous toad. While the world-war has brutalized men, it has as a moral paradox added immeasurably to the sum of human nobility. Its epic grandeur is only beginning to reveal itself, and in it the human soul has reached the high water marker ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... heard the pad of stealthy feet Dogging us down the thin white road; And the song grew weary again and harsh, And the black trees dripped like the fringe of a marsh, And a laugh crept out like a shadowy toad; And we knew it was neither ghoul nor djinn: It was Creeping Sin! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... friendly stove—for dessert, taking a merry scamper for flowers, over the ragged ascent from whence the boulders came. Everywhere about is the trumpet creeper, but not yet in bloom. The Indian turnip is in blossom here, and so the smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... off along the white road that led to Garchester, and on to Crogate and so to Tunbridge Wells, where there was a Toad Rock he had heard of, but never seen. (It seemed to him this must needs be a marvel.) And so to other towns and cities. He would walk and loiter by the way, and sleep in inns at night, and get an odd job here and there and talk to strange people. Perhaps he would get quite a lot of work and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... handle connects the top of the rim with the back of the vessel. The handle being broken off and the vessel inverted, b, there is a decided change; we are struck by the resemblance to a frog or toad. The original legs, having dark concentric lines painted around them, look like large protruding eyes, and the mouth gapes in the most realistic manner, while the two short broken ends of the handle resemble legs and serve to support the vessel ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... lost all patience with them, and so, finding it was no use to break some of them, and not all, they rejected them all, with curses; and thus this great stone was carted away as rubbish from the mine, and found, like a toad ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... quite. They said it was—you'll excuse me, sir—a hand that they saw. Emma trod on it once at the bottom of the stairs. She thought then it was a half-frozen toad, only white. And then Parfit was washing up the dishes in the scullery. She wasn't thinking about anything in particular. It was close on dusk. She took her hands out of the water and was drying them absentminded like on the roller towel, when she found that she ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... tree-toad her within an inch of her life, though, when we come home in the wagons at night? I shouldn't think she could stand that long. I guess she wants all her beauty-sleep. And Kate Arnall can tu-whit, tu-whoo! equal to Tennyson himself, or ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... most men are, with making a living. The idea of poverty chafed him. He had once been a considerable toad in a sizable puddle. He had inherited a competence and lost it, and power to reclaim it was beyond him. He wasted no regrets upon the loss of that material security, although he sometimes wondered how ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... "Take a toad and dry him very well in the sun, then put him in a linen bag, and hang him with a string about the neck of the party that bleedeth, and let it hang so low that it may touch the breast on the left side near unto the heart; and this ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
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