"Toad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lady's pretty beagle Beauty, I 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 ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... fear, bantam," said a jolly Dominican in his ear, "that toad's blood was never hot." It certainly looked like it. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... have my reply to make to men who have used 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 to me and asked for a water right, I should have given ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... 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 tale of dread, Of the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... council-table: 70 And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep or swim or fly or run, After me so as you never saw! 75 And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole and toad and newt and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper." (And here they noticed round his neck 80 A scarf of red and yellow stripe, To match with his coat of the self-same check; And at the scarf's end hung a ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... said Helena, resolutely. "Of course I know it all sounds horrid. You've been as nice as possible; and anybody who didn't sympathize with my views would think me a nasty, ungrateful toad. But I'm not going to be coaxed into giving them up, any more than I'm going ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the South became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... from a late autumnal ramble in Finistere, and while the situation was still new to him, "very curious. Rainham and Lightmark were inseparable; so were Rainham and Oswyn. And all the time Lightmark and Oswyn were about as friendly as the toad and the harrow. Sounds like Euclid, doesn't it? Things equal to the same thing, and quite unequal ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... destruction of the whole crop; which they did, first by perforating the skin, and afterwards eating their way into the fruit; and, after making several unsuccessful experiments to destroy them, it occurred to me that I had seen the toad feed on them. I accordingly put about half a dozen toads into the pit, and, in the course of a few days, scarcely an ant was to ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... is 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... pipes, and a walrus tusk, carved about a little. What took my eye was an old Chinese bowl, because inside it was a little jade idol—a fearful little wretch, with mother-o'-pearl eyes. It would squat in your thoughts like a toad, that idol—eh, where does Jabberjee come in? Well, here ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... love of music, which her Scottish-German father possessed in a high degree, leaping over a generation, reappeared in Robert Browning. His capacity for intimate friendships with animals—spider and toad and lizard—was surely an inheritance from his mother. Mr Stillman received from Browning's sister an account of her mother's unusual power over both wild creatures and household pets. "She could lure the butterflies in the garden to her," which reminds us of Browning's whistling for lizards ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Flasket of Guts before her; and salutes her with a pretty Phrase of How now, Double Tripe? Upon the mention of a Country Gentlewoman, whom he knows nothing of, (no one can imagine why) he will lay his Life she is some awkward ill-fashioned Country Toad, who not having above four Dozen of Hairs on her Head, has adorned her Baldness with a large white Fruz, that she may look Sparkishly in the Forefront of the King's Box at an old Play. Unnatural Mixture of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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 him ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... 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 of courage ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... 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
... toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes. The butterfly beside the road Preaches contentment to ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... these round wooden boxes had been split and spoilt, and half of it was left lying with the hollow part downwards. Under this shelter a toad had his house. Bevis peered in at him, and touched him with a twig to make him move an inch or two, for he was so lazy, and sat there all day long, except when it rained. Sometimes the toad told him a story, but not very often, for he was a silent old philosopher, and not very fond of anybody. ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... labor past, Wildered, faint, he falls at last, Sinking where the causeway's edge Moulders in the slimy sedge, There let every noxious thing Trail its filth and fix its sting; Let the bull-toad taint him over, Round him let mosquitoes hover, In his ears and eyeballs tingling, With his blood their poison mingling, Till, beneath the solar fires, Rankling all, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... spacious hallway is my natty little suite, A commodious and accessible abode. By judicious disposition, with exclusion of my feet, There is sleeping room for Oliver the toad. ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... Pauline went to her "Nursery" to feed and play with her strange little pets. But one morning she ran down as usual, after breakfast, to find all of the toad family had disappeared. The fence that enclosed her "Nursery" was completely broken down. Not a single toad was left of the funny creatures who had ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... very early to breakfast, and brought a few more whom we had not previously seen; also two somewhat old and faded frail, if not fair, ones; soon after a little boy came by himself. This young imp of Satan was just like a toad—all mouth and stomach. It appeared these natives practise the same rites of incision, excision, and semi-circumcision as the Fowler's Bay tribes; and Tommy, who comes from thence, said he could understand ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... 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 suffrage, in ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... monsoons, the skipper was provided with a wonderfully small voice, suggesting, as he lectured upon sea-fishing to the novices who were getting into "snarls" with their tackle hard by where he sat, the circumstance of a tree-toad discoursing from the hollow of a brave ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... that a farmer grows, it is estimated that his insect enemies eat another dollar's worth. A little bug called the "San Jose" scale has nearly ruined the orchards of some of the Eastern states. To fight him, we must know how he lives. That is nature study. By study we learn that the hop-toad is our best garden friend. He will spend the whole night watching for the cutworms that are after our tomato plants. When we see a woodpecker industriously pecking at the bark of our apple trees, we know that he is after ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... is not warned by her words, as, while they sit embraced, she says, "Thy piercing glance, thy stubborn beard, might I see the one, feel the other, forever! The rough locks of thy prickly hair, might they forever flow around Flosshilde! Thy toad's shape, thy croaking voice, oh, might I, wondering and mute, see and hear them exclusively for ever!" It is the sudden mocking laughter of the two listening sisters which draws him from his dream—when Flosshilde slips from his hold, and the three again swim merrily around, and laugh, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... official missive. 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 have Pitt's second letter to Auckland, in which he again assures him how deeply ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the monarch, and then crept back into its den. Charlemagne followed, anxious to learn the reason of its strange behaviour. He was surprised when, on looking into the dark hole, he saw an ugly toad sitting on the serpent's eggs, and filling nearly the whole ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... polecat, sovereign of its native wood, Dashes damnation upon bad and good; The health of all the upas trees impairs By exhalations deadlier than theirs; Poisons the rattlesnake and warts the toad— The creeks go rotten and the rocks corrode! She shakes o'er breathless hill and shrinking dale The horrid aspergillus of her tail! From every saturated hair, till dry, The spargent fragrances divergent fly, Deafen the earth and scream ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... blinked a couple of times, swallowed like a toad that has snapped up a live coal, and then ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... will, O singers all Who sing because you want to sing! Sing! peacock on the orchard wall, Or tree-toad by the trickling spring! Sing! every bird on every bough— Sing! every living, loving thing— Sing any song, and ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 Opposition ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... every other one in the group. Two animals may look alike at first to the undiscerning eye, but a keen analysis of the measurements of the various parts of their bodies will show distinct differences. This is quite as true among lower animals. A toad may lay a double string of four hundred eggs which may be fertilized by the same male at the same time. These eggs may develop into tadpoles in the same pool not over a foot square. Within a few weeks these little toads may have gained their legs, lost their tails, ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... mornin', jist at day-break, and sun-rise on them everlastin' hills is tall sun-rise, and no mistake, p'rhaps nothin was ever seen so fine except the first one, since creation. It takes the rag off quite. Well, she was an enterprisin' little toad, was Miss Lot too, afeered of nothin' a'most; so nothin' would sarve her but she must out and have a scramb up to the tip-topest part of the peak ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... wood where the ground was all slimy, and where some huge fat water snakes were gambolling about. In the middle of this opening was a house built of the bones of the wrecked; there sat the witch, letting a toad eat out of her mouth, just as mortals let a little canary eat sugar. She called the hideous water snakes her little chickens, and allowed them to crawl about on her ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the croaking of the toad, In their caves that make abode; Earthy Dun that pants for breath, With her swelled sides full of death; By the crested adders' pride, That along the clifts do glide; By thy visage fierce and black; By the death's-head on thy ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Baxter, as he himself tells us, sent communications from the country to Edwards. His correspondents were legion, but he concealed their names.] Yet there was a kind of coarse business-like conscientiousness in the toad; and, though he was credulous and unscrupulous in his collections of scandal, I do not believe he invented documents or lied deliberately. I do not doubt, therefore, that Mrs. Attaway, whether she went ultimately to Jericho or to Jerusalem, did know of Milton's ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... many of them believing, that if they lead good lives, they will be born again to great riches, and be made governors; whereas those who lead bad lives will be changed to some vile animal, as a frog or toad. They burn sacrifices every new moon, mumbling over certain prayers in a kind of chanting voice, tingling a small bell, which they ring aloud at the close of each prayer. When any of them of good account lies sick and like to die, they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— The Acharnians • Aristophanes
... including 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 ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... 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 ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... compassion, had, perhaps, diminished the faculty for irritation, but had left intact the power of waxing indignant; he had the kindliness of a brahmin, and the severity of a judge; he took pity upon a toad, but he crushed a viper. Now, it was into a hole of vipers that his glance had just been directed, it was a nest of monsters that he ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Johnny Chuck, Billy Mink, Little Joe Otter, Jerry Muskrat, Hooty the Owl, Bobby Coon, Sammy Jay, Blacky the Crow, Grandfather Frog, Mr. Toad, Spotty the Turtle, the Merry Little Breezes, all were there. Last of all came Jimmy Skunk. Very handsome he looked in his shining black coat and very sorry he appeared that such a dreadful thing should have happened. ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess
... give a cheerful turn to the conversation. "I took my aversion to frogs from the time when a naughty boy played me a trick, and threw a great big toad, as brown as a crust, at me. He said it was a bull-frog, and that if he struck it with a nettle it would roar like a bull. He did strike the poor thing, and then it began to moan piteously, so that I can never forget it, as if it would call for vengeance against our ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... 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 in medicine and magic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... three days, as soon as her room can be well aired; for, to give her her due, I don't think her to blame, but flatter myself she is quite contented with the easy footing we live upon; separate beds, dining in her dressing-room when she is out of humour, and a little toad-eater that I had got for her, and whose pockets and bosom I have never examined, to see if' she brought any billets-doux from Tommy Lyttelton or any of her fellows. I shall follow her myself in less than a fortnight; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... incense before him. For to be Crawley's chum was to gain a certain amount of consideration in the school, and Gould did not mind shining with a reflected light. He was not like Saurin in that respect, whose egotism saved him at least from being a toad-eater. Gould was vain enough, but his vanity was of a different kind. But hitherto all his efforts had been in vain, and Crawley had rather snubbed him. This had not prevented Gould from talking about him, exaggerating his merits, and bragging ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Goggles, or Grubby, or Nigger, or Toad. I want to have some name, else I shan't be able to talk to him so well. I wish mother had helped me; it's very differcult. I can't seem to think of a name quite ugly enough. I expect p'raps Mr. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... 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 ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... The toad was half asleep when Puck came, but it opened with alertness, its beautiful round bright eyes, set in a rim of gold. Then Puck asked the question: "Oh, thou that carriest a jewel in thy head, are there any things alive that are older than ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... poisonous vine Stretched its rank nets across the lonely lawn. For no one went there,—'t was a 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 Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... directions. One was bright and glittering, and drawn by swans 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 very soon it was evident that ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... along the sandy road, reaching at intervals to grasp handfuls of sassafras leaves from the bushes beside the way. From the ditch on the left a brown toad hopped slowly into the dust of the road. On the worm-eaten rails of the fence, on the other side, a gray lizard glided swiftly like a stealthy shadow of the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... a sexual union between the most helpless and enslaved females of the dark race and the most recklessly dominant males of the white. "He enters a world in which there was no place prepared for him." His father was about as sensible of his parental obligations towards him as a toad towards its spawn in the next ditch. To him he "was a broken wineglass from last night's feast." "Often without a family, always without a nation or race, without education or moral training, and despised by ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... think? Just as they reached the spot where stood the old stump, with the knobs growing on the side of it, like warts on a toad's back, ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... Wotan and Loge in search of the gold. Then we meet the Nibelungs and the Nibelights, all livers under a water-cure system; and then—it's like a musical nightmare—Alberich changes himself into a toad and is towed off as a prisoner. Fafner settles Fasolt by a drum-head Court Martial, so that Fafner gets the golden honey, and Fasolt gets the whacks—and—please, Sir, I don't know any more—but some of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, July 2, 1892 • Various
... 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, and ventured to peck at the crumbs ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... stood 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 pedestal suddenly declared ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... big one—three pans full of gold. Later—Still more yet. A cleanup of nine thousand dollars and three of the largest nuggets I ever saw has just been made this evening. Two of the nuggets were long and flat, as large as a tree-toad, and much the shape of one. The men took the first load of gold dust to town—seventy-five pounds—but the bank was closed before they could get the remainder there. The foreman says they are prepared to keep it here safely over night, ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... his troops near Beaver Dam when he realized that concentrating there was a mistake, so he began making dispositions for remedying his error, and while we leisurely took the Negro-foot toad toward Richmond, he changed his tactics and hauled off from my rear, urging his horses to the death in order to get in between Richmond and my column. This he effected about 10 o'clock on the morning of the 11th, concentrating ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... stronger case of infantile prejudice than to-day. A child of less than three years old came running out of a by-street (apparently no person being near it), and called after me, Kafer, kafer, "Infidel, infidel"! and spat at me in the bargain like a little toad. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... be called Sallie Growler?" asked Laddie, as he and Russ looked at the fish. It was very ugly, with a head shaped like a toad, and a ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope
... at the toad, and said he had no place to put him, but the butterfly was a beauty, and if Mrs. Jo would give him a big pin, he would stick it right up in ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... lest that should befall us which befell a scientific West Indian of old. For hearing much of the edible properties of certain European toadstools, he resolved to try a few experiments in his own person on West Indian ones; during the course of which he found himself one evening, after a good toad-stool dinner, raving mad. The doctor was sent for, and brought him round, a humbled man. But a heavier humiliation awaited him, when his negro butler, who had long looked down on him for his botanical studies, entered with his morning cup of coffee. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... discomposing 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
... might soften the impious 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, sprinkling the waters of Avernus all over the ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... 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
... set to his friend as they lolled on the railings in the park, 'a long way above any of those plain-headed ones she tried to palm off upon us last year: the South American girl with the big eyes and a complexion like a toad, the Forfarshire girl with freckles and unsophisticated carrots. "Those lovely Spanish eyes," said Lady K——, "that Titianesque auburn hair!" But it didn't answer. Both the girls were plain, and they have gone back to their native ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and ingratitude. I find that howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be extracted from it; like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is taken from the head of the venomous and despised toad." ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the place of the severed neck, and a 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 ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... 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, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... head in the dusk. This owl crossed my path not more than an inch or two in front. It nearly grazed my forehead, so that I blinked. Oh, how I felt reassured! I believe, tears welled in my eyes. When I come to the home of frog and toad, of gartersnake and owl and whip-poor-will, a great tenderness takes possession of me, and I should like to shield and help them all and tell them not to be afraid of me; but I rather ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... a tramp like you to insult gentlemen like us," continued the lackey, in an imposing tone. "And did you not say that when I took Mademoiselle to mass I looked like a green toad upon the box,... thus trying to dishonor my physique and my clothes? Did you ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... 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 ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... shall catch him," thought Loki. "Could you make yourself as little as a toad that quickly slinks under the rock when there is ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... bucket with something in it came out through a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. Who'll read the book? I, said ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... resembled hoof marks, there were indistinct traces of claws—that "an" otter had made the marks. After that many other witnesses wrote to the News. The correspondence was so great that, in the issue of March 10th, only a selection could be given. There's "a" jumping-rat solution and "a" hopping-toad inspiration, and then someone came out strong with an idea of "a" hare that had galloped with pairs of feet held close together, so as to make impressions in ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... go 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
... at least, have worked thy cure; Thy fancy's rickets plague thee not at all: Had I not been, so hadst thou, sure, Walked thyself off this earthly ball Why here to caverns, rocky hollows slinking, Sit'st thou, as 'twere an owl a-blinking? Why suck'st, from sodden moss and dripping stone, Toad-like, thy nourishment alone? A fine way, this, thy time to fill! The Doctor's in thy ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... rested before us. The 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 formerly an inn rejoicing in the sign of "Robin Hood ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... blushes: a being so much sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the judge had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter- house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perceived 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
... like a ball, he landed at the feet of Carrie, who, spurning him as she would a toad, went back to the parlor, where for more than an hour ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... them. He longed so for "squirms" that Tony got a wooden box and made little divisions and brings him in a lot of new ones almost every day. They fill Roxanne's days and nights with terror. And it is upsetting to see the fishing-worms in the dirt, while the hop-toad stays out on the bed a good deal of the time; but we have to stand it and smile at it in our voices while talking to him, even if we have terror in our faces. Yesterday Uncle Pompey spent most of his time catching the chickens and ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... we ourselves have discovered; and set fire to this superfluous mat, to these aged forests already half consumed, and finish with iron what fire cannot destroy! Soon, instead of rush and water-lily from which the toad compounds his venom, we shall see buttercups and clover, sweet and salutary herbs. Herds of bounding animals will tread this once impracticable soil and find abundant, constantly renewed pasture. They will multiply, to multiply ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... my father's—for the few words from Kirkstone that would set him free. I offered everything I had in the world, even my body and soul. God, I'll never forget that night! He sat there, fat and oily, two big rings on his stubby fingers—a monstrous toad in human form—and he chuckled and laughed at me in his joy, as though I were a mountebank playing amusing tricks for him—and there my soul was bleeding itself out before his eyes! And his son came in, fat and oily and accursed like his father, ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... English Mines; as Silver, Tin, Copper, Iron, Lead, Antimony, and some Gold extracted out of Tin. Next of the Stones, of which he finds about 70 sorts; & amongst them, Bristol Diamonds, Agates, Hyacinths, Emerods, Loadstones, Toad-stones, (which last yet he affirms to be nothing but the grinding-teeth of the {365} Fish Lupus) Pearls, Corals, Marble, Alablaster, Emery: To which he adds the various kinds of Coals; as also Bitumens, Turfs and Jets. And thirdly of the various kinds of Allam, Vitriol, ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... call him bad?" the woman cried. "Ah, no wonder the gods hate you! No doubt you were very wicked ages and ages ago, and so now you are made a widow. By and by you will be born a snake or a toad." And, gathering up her ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... it," urged The General, in a soft, insinuating voice. "You're pretty slick with the toad stabber, an' any way one ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... yu take for dinner to-day? There's duck; or yu might like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's—Well! we'll see what we can du like." And off she went, without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... springtime bright and early A-tripping o'er the meadow he is seen. Through all the bright June weather, Like a jolly little tramp, He wanders o'er the hillside, down the road; Around his yellow feather, Thy gypsy fireflies camp; His companions are the wood lark and the toad. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... nevertheless. One is at work on an exhibit for one's school, you see. Each of us girls was assigned a subject for vacation work. Mine is 'Desert Glimpses'—a collection of pictures, curios and so on, representing points of interest in the desert country. I've a horned toad at home, and a blue-tailed lizard, and some pictures of jack rabbits, with their ears attached to the frame, and quite a few rattlesnake rattles. So to-day," she smiled again at him, "I rode down here to ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... for the butterfly upon the road, preaching contentment to the toad, who, beneath the harrow, knows exactly where each tooth-point goes. Let the butterfly ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... 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 prosper, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Bowery he went like a human toad, keeping in the shadows, keeping his eyes on the ground before him, a glint like a shudder in their depths—on he went with hopping, lurching jerks, with whispering lips. Street after street he passed, and then at a corner he turned and went East—not far, only ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... at the Ear of Eve under the [form [4]] of a Toad, in order to produce vain Dreams and Imaginations, is a Circumstance of the same Nature; as his starting up in his own Form is wonderfully fine, both in the Literal Description, and in the Moral which is concealed under it. His Answer upon his ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... exclaimed 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 ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... giveth himself born airs, as if every inch of the Riding belonged to him. He hath all the viciousness of Yordas, without the pluck to face it out. A little beast that hath the venom, without the courage, of a toad. Ah, how I should ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... ill, and that Burghley and Walsingham seemed resolved not to let slip this opportunity of ridding themselves of the prisoner, my Lady burst out with, "Ah! there it is! She will die, and my promise is broken, and she will haunt me to my dying day, all along of that venomous toad and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the stranger who had forgotten his; we learned that fish is good on other days than Friday and that trout crisps beautifully in bacon grease; we found eleventeen uses for empty lard pails and discovered the difference between an owl and a tree toad. We gained a speaking acquaintance with the Great Dipper, and learned where to look for the north star, why fires must be put out and what chipmunks do for ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... might go into business, as did the poor weavers of Toad Lane, with their sack of oatmeal, firkin of butter, a little sugar and flour," said Jack laughingly. "A fair division of labor. The men of Yerbury shall provide work, and the women shall train the inefficient how and where to ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... where the field mouse and the toad Have burrowed; where, beside the road, The grasshopper and katydid All winter have been safely hid; And when the bumblebee will come A-booming back with pleasant hum? April can tell you, for 'tis she Opens the door that sets ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... With Drake before the King of Life and Death, A strumpet wrestled with a mountebank For pence, a loose-limbed Lais with a clown Of Cherry Hilton. Leering at their lewd twists, Cross-legged upon the deck, sluggish with sack, Like a squat toad sat Puff ... Propped up against the bulwarks, at his side, Archer, his apple-squire, hiccoughed a bawdy song. Suddenly, through that orgy, with wild eyes, Yet with her customary smile, O, there I saw in daylight what Kit Marlowe saw Through blinding mists, the face of his first love. She stood before ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the butterfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... here last year, to the convention. I heard the speech you made that time, nominating York Falkner for governor. Too bad you didn't run yourself. You'd have made it, saving the state from the tree-toad which is hanging ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... had begun to prick—look, here is the mark of it"—and opening his kaross he pointed to a little white line just below the breast-bone—"when a strange shadow thrown by the fire of the burning huts came between Bangu and me, a shadow as that of a toad standing on its hind legs. I looked round and saw that it was the shadow of Zikali, whom I had seen once or twice. There he stood, though whence he came I know not, wagging his great white head that sits on the top of his body like a pumpkin on an ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... have had him come away, but he was in for it; and though he swore he would come away at that flask, there I left him. I wonder at the civility of these people; when he saw I would drink no more, he would always pass the bottle by me, and yet I could not keep the toad from drinking himself, nor he would not let me go neither, nor Masham, who was with us. When I got home, I found a parcel directed to me, and opening it, I found a pamphlet written entirely against myself, not ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... what could this almost naked, white savage be? He had heard him speak but once—when he had cautioned him to silence—and then in excellent German and the well-modulated tones of culture. He watched him now as the fascinated toad watches the snake that is about to devour it. He saw the graceful limbs and symmetrical body motionless as a marble statue as the creature crouched in the concealment of the leafy foliage. Not a muscle, not a nerve ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... worst enemies? Will the toad eat them? Do chickens eat them? Have you ever seen chickens scratching in manure and feeding on the fly maggots? Put a few drops of formaldehyde, which you can get from a druggist, in a few spoonfuls ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring big city,—their prettiest girl has been exported to the same market; all their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I hate little toad-eating cities. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... most wandering of all orders—viz. the woodcock. (381/2. "Origin," Edition VI., page 328.) The tarsus was firmly coated with mud, weighing when dry 9 grains, and from this the Juncus bufonius, or toad rush, germinated. By the way, the locust case verifies what I said in the "Origin," that many possible means of distribution would be hereafter discovered. I quite agree about the extreme difficulty of the distribution of land mollusca. You will have seen in the last edition of "Origin" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 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
... purple and white. The dewberry, a blue-coloured more luscious bramble fruit, and tiny wild roses, grow on the marl-face also. At its foot are the two most beautiful flowers, though not the most effective, the small yellow snapdragon, or toad-flax, and the forget-me-not. This blue of the forget-me-nots is as peculiar as it is beautiful. It is not a common blue by any means, any more than the azure of the chalk-blue butterflies is common among other ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... the living Melpomene, and something so burlesque as Sadler's-wells. She laughed, and said it offered her a very ludicrous image, for Mrs. Siddons and Sadler's-wells," said she, " seems to me as ill-fitted as the dish they call a toad in a hole which I never saw, but always think of with anger, - -putting a noble sirloin of beef into .1 ,'poor, Paltry ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... how fur a toad'll jump!" the Parson said disgustedly as he heard the tale of these two huskies who had turned babies; "nor ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... 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
... at different epochs been revived before the eyes of Maupertuis and Constant Dumeril (members of the Academy of Sciences) after being frozen stiff. Auguste Dumeril, son of Constant, and who was the reporter of the committee relative to the Blois toad in 1851, published a curious memoir the following year in which he narrates how he interrupted life through congelation of the liquids and solids of the organism. Some frogs, whose internal temperature had been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... contrast to what you have just read you may like to hear of Gulliver's first adventures in Brobdingnag, the land of giants. Gulliver had been found by a farmer and carried home. When the farmer's wife first saw him "she screamed and ran back, as women in England do at the sight of a toad or a spider." However, when she saw that he was only a tiny man, she ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... big or little, somebody else wins. When I was younger, just butting into the game, there was another fellow trying to get hold of a lead mine out West that I was after. He beat me to it at first. He was a big toad in the puddle and I was a little one. But I didn't quit. I waited round the corner. By and by I saw my chance. He was in a hole and I had the cover to the hole. Before I let him out I owned that mine. It cost me more ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mammals which can fly, viz., 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 islands," I will adduce another very remarkable fact, viz., ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... Excellency, seeing I never asked for anything, but only for his favour. Accordingly, this wholly unexpected way of dealing with me put me in a fury, and I was especially enraged by the manner which that venomous toad assumed in discharging his commission. I exclaimed that if the Duke gave me ten thousand crowns I should not be paid enough, and that if I had ever thought things would come to this haggling, I should not have settled in his service. Thereupon the surly fellow ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... coast coarse float foam goat gloam groan hoarse load loan loaf oak oar oats roast road roam shoal soap soar throat toad toast ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... plans, Carl ran to the back of the building, shinned up a water-spout (humming "Just Before the Battle, Mother"), pried open a class-room window with his large jack-knife, of the variety technically known as a "toad-stabber" (changing his tune to "Onward, Christian Soldiers"), climbed in, tiptoed through the room, stopping often to listen, felt along the plaster walls to find the door, eased the door open, calmly sat down in the corridor, pulled ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... has not been a success. And then when the woman of the house detests you! She often does. And when they ask you to give your imitation of So-and-so, and forget that his niece is in the room! Do you know what they would have called people like me a hundred years ago? Toad- eaters! There is one of us in an old novel I read a bit of once. She goes about, an old maid, to houses. Once she arrived in a snow storm and a hearse. Am I to come to that? I keep learning new drawing-room tricks. And when you fall ill, as I did at Eckford, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the plants, animals, minerals and so on, as we come across them. Then suppose we get lost and have to hunt for food, how are we to know what is safe and what isn't? Come, now, do you know the difference between a toad-stool ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... their mile in fifteen or twenty minutes, but they make more row about it than a high-pressure Mississippi steamer; and the crazy little trap is noisier in proportion to its size than anything I have ever seen, except perhaps an Indiana tree-toad. If you make an excursion outside the walls, the omnibus, noise and all, is inevitable; let it come. But inside the city you must walk; the slower the better, for every door ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay |
