"Toad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the living rock, Deep hid from man's divining rod, A spark may open, and the shock Bring forth an ingot or a toad: The secret that is kept for years, One stroke of fate yields to the sight; And if the toad a jewel wears, That jewel ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... 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 saddle and ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... guts." It lies in ambush like a pigmy field octopus, with deadly suckers for draining the sap of its victims. These it mats together in its wiry, sinuous coils, and chokes relentlessly by the acre. Nevertheless, the petty garotter— like a toad, "ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." "If boiled," says Hill, "with a little ginger, the dodder in decoction works briskly as a purge. Also, the thievish herb, when bruised and applied externally to scrofulous tumours, is an ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... past Ruan Lanihale church towards Ruan Cove, and ten paces beyond the lych-gate—where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck—the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish, for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this belief is discredited now, and the well neglected: and the events ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of those playful English names for dishes, like Pink Poodle, Scotch Woodcock (given below), Bubble and Squeak (Bubblum Squeakum), and Toad in the Hole. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... 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 ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... In the beginning of the year 1755, on rumours of a great armament at Brest, one Virette, a Swiss, who had been a kind of toad-eater to this St. Germain, was denounced to Lord Holdernesse for a spy; but Mr. Stanley going pretty surlily to his lordship, on his suspecting a friend of his, Virette was declared innocent, and the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... eat a toad, or a potful of caterpillars," I answered; and having cut off a portion for Caesar, I slung the remainder over my shoulder. We hastened on until we came to some brushwood, where we could collect sufficient ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... and this must be taken into calculation when one considers what woman owes to religion. The Reformation reduced woman to the position of a mere breeder of children. During the sway of Puritanism woman was a poor, benighted being, a human toad under the harrow of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and on hers, peering into the loose hair about her brow, and firing the delicate skin underneath. A large shadow of her shape rose upon the wall and ceiling. She bent forward, at which each diamond on her neck gave a sinister wink like a toad's; and pressing her forehead against his temple she entered on her story of her acquaintance with Alec d'Urberville and its results, murmuring the words without flinching, and with ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... "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 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... 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 ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... rising and falling of the sea, far away along the coast, was the most important. A minor sound was the scurr of a distant night-hawk. Among the minutest where all were minute were the light settlement of gossamer fragments floating in the air, a toad humbly labouring along through the grass near the entrance, the crackle of a dead leaf which a worm was endeavouring to pull into the earth, a waft of air, getting nearer and nearer, and expiring at his feet under the ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... overshadowed as to enjoy but a kind of twilight. Wild vines entangled the trees and flaunted in their faces; brambles and briers caught their clothes as they passed; the garter snake glided across their path; the spotted toad hopped and waddled before them; and the restless catbird mewed at them from every thicket. Had Wolfert Webber been deeply read in romantic legend he might have fancied himself entering upon forbidden, enchanted ground, or that these were some of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... bag is usually the skin of some animal, such as the beaver, otter, polecat, or weazel; or of some bird, as the eagle, the magpie, or hawk; or of some reptile, as the snake or the toad. This skin is stuffed with any thing the owner chooses to put into it, such as dry grass, or leaves; and it is carefully sewed up into some curious form, and ornamented in a curious manner. Some medicine bags are very large, and form a conspicuous part of an Indian's appendages; while others ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... 1. The toad spends the winter in a dormant state. 2. Pride in dress or in beauty betrays a weak mind. 3. The city of London is situated on the river Thames. 4. Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769, on an island in the Mediterranean. ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... 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 ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... you suffered with Mr. Bean. But what I was sayin', some do say Phrony Mellen's bound to have the minister for herself, and that's why she sent Rose Ellen off, traipsin' way down to Tupham, when her grandma'am don't need her no more'n a toad needs a tail." ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... 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, and pore upon the filth that muddled by. "Even dogs are not what they ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 of his looks, though they could ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... 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, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... of second-hand meerschaum 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, ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... past us. 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, ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... had been a lawyer at Franklin, and he had come down to Kilo because he preferred a being a big toad in a small puddle, rather than a little toad in a middle-sized one. This was one of his reasons, but another was that he had complete and full faith in Richard Toole, and intended to be a political power ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... have been bitten by them, if properly treated, generally recover. The lizards are of various sizes, some quite small, others more than three feet long, and covered with a coarse rough skin like that of a toad. They have the character of being venomous, and even dangerous to life; but it may be doubted whether they are not, like our toads and newts, in reality ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... to hold fast this single clue to the crooked and amazing entanglements of the policy of James. The insolence, the meanness, and the prevarications of this royal toad-eater are only thus explained. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... never before seen one of those whiskered, toad-like natives of the Canadian waters (so common to the Bay of Quinte, where they grow to a great size), that I was really terrified at the sight of the hideous beast, and told Sol to throw it away. In this I was very foolish, for they are esteemed good eating in many parts of Canada; ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of Scotland is also the same with the toad-stone of Derbyshire, which is of the amygdaloides species; it is also the same with the flagstone of the south of Staffordshire, which is a simple whin-stone, or perfect trap. England, therefore, must be included in this great ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Shakespeare, great poet of humanity: 66:3 Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... been wondering about the people in Casperton. Like Doc Welch. I used to see him in the street with his little black bag. I always thought it was full of pills and scalpels; but maybe it really had zebra's tails and toad's eyes in it. Maybe he's really a magician on his way to cast spells against demons. Maybe the people I used to see hurrying to catch the bus every morning weren't really going to the office. Maybe they go down ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... 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. "Her father must have heaps of friends ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... outside, and squatted himself down upon the floor at a little distance. In the shadow of the table which cut off the light from the hanging lamp he looked, I remember, exactly like an enormous and antique toad. I threw him a piece of tobacco which he thrust into his corn-cob pipe and lit ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... rechristened them since I began Roman History with Miss Heritage. Mucius Scaevola's the Salamander, because they're indifferent to fire, like he was—though Miss Heritage says it wouldn't be kind to try with Mucius. Numa Pompilius is the Blind-worm—he used to be Kaa—and the Toad has changed from Nobbles ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... man who bides his time to repay a wrong or fancied wrong, who keeps alive in his hardened nature the vile thing hatred, and would for centuries, did he live thus long,—as the toad is kept alive in the solid rock. Hugh Miller says he is 'disposed to regard the poison bag of the serpent as a mark of degradation;' this venomous spite is certainly a mark of degradation, and it is only creeping, crawling souls that have it, but the creeping and crawling ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... be used against the Independents and the Sectaries. [Footnote: Richard 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 ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... one wake up and begin to grow. The tiny living bodies in the fertilizing principle of the other also wake up and begin to grow. But higher life is better guarded, because less prolific. The frog and the toad lay but few eggs as compared with the fish. Fish eggs may drop under the stones or float away, and so escape the vital touch of the fertilizing principle. There are so many that numbers may be lost ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... 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
... strong, wrinkled and seamed, their rough backs spotted like a toad's, the wrists ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... like to hear the following case, as it relates to a migratory bird belonging to the 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 ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... continue angry he would take on some visible form. Perhaps he would become a toad or a squirrel, or some other little animal, and would have to live here on the Earth-plane forevermore. But, if he keeps good natured, he can come here and have his fun, and not be seen by any one except a Seer, or ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... garden gate, And went to weed the onion-bed: The growing plants stood tall and straight; "But what is this?" surprised he said. Some broken bricks, some stones and sticks, And underneath them, crushed and dead, A large brown toad! "James, Martin, Fred!" He called three little boys, who played Near by, beneath a pear-tree's shade, And sternly asked, "What cruel play Is this you've ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... might cure me of. Foolish girl that I was! to suppose that any creature is really ugly, that has all its limbs contrived with heavenly wisdom, and was doubtless formed to some beautiful end, though a child cannot comprehend it.—Doubtless a frog or a toad is not uglier in itself than a squirrel or a pretty green lizard; but we want understanding ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... riddles," said Anna, smiling, and at the same time arranging a wreath of artificial roses. "Or no, it was not Count Ostermann, but a toad singing his hoarse song. Drive away that toad, Ostermann, it is broad day—why, then, have we ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... might have been a model to all critics. I must except politics, however, for in these he could be rabid and savage. He had a passion for independence, which, though pushed to excess, was not without grandeur. No lick-platter, no parasite, no toad-eater, no literary beggar, no hunter after patronage and subscriptions; even in his dealings with Audley Egerton, he insisted on naming the price for his labours. He took a price, because, as the papers required by Audley demanded much reading and detail, which was not at all to his taste, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... embark, and your father may have carried a musket under him. Your grandmother may have cried huzza for Marlborough but what is the Prince Duke to you, and did you ever, so much as hear tell of his name? How many hundred or thousand of years had that toad lived who was in the coal at the defunct Exhibition?—and yet he was not a bit better informed than toads seven or eight ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this time,' said one of the Arlington Street 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 obscurity ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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 Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... fat in the frying-pan; when done, put it with the fat in which it has been fried into a baking-dish containing some Yorkshire or suet pudding batter, made as directed at Nos. 57 and 58, and bake the toad-in-the-hole for about an hour and a half, or else send it to ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... 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 ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... not so much brains as an old gander. But his brother Menelaus, there's a fellow! the goodly transformation of Jupiter when he loved Europa; the primitive cuckold; a vile monkey tied eternally to his brother's tail,—to be a dog, a mule, a cat, a toad, an owl, a lizard, a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny.—Hey day! Will with a Wisp, and Jack ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... difficult in these days of toleration to imagine that any one can have taken the violent suggestions of the 'Shortest Way' as put forward seriously. To those who might say that persecuting the Dissenters was cruel, says De Foe, 'I answer, 'tis cruelty to kill a snake or a toad in cold blood, but the poison of their nature makes it a charity to our neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury received, but for prevention.... Serpents, toads, and vipers, &c., are noxious to the body, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... until they had brought down two wild boars and also an animal fashioned like unto nothing I had ever seen before. It was something after the manner of a serpent, but speckled on the stomach as is a toad, and Captain Smith believed the true name of it to be Iguana, the like of which he says that he has often seen in other countries and that its flesh makes ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... ambassador royal of 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 ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Toad's a funny little beast, He's found in every land from West to East. The children bring him in, to our amaze, And though we try to turn him out, he stays. He's never seen with soldiers, nor with fops, But with the schoolboys how he ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... 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
... all skinned and scarred, and the trace of the great works can no longer be followed. At the top of the hill, in the middle of a filthy big pool, is a ruined enemy trench-mortar, sitting up like a swollen toad. ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... flamed and glistened under the great wash-kettle. A tree-toad was persistently calling for rain in the dry distance. The girl, gravely impassive, beat the clothes with the heavy paddle. Her mother shortly ceased to prod the white heaps in the boiling water, and presently took up ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... also writing and reading. When the departed President was 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 ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... 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, they heard ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... toast roar load goat roam float road moan toad roam throat oar boat oat meal croak soar foam loaf soap coarse loaves groan board goal boast cloak ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... for three weeks after that, and though he was still alive the knowledge of my unconfessed and unrepented wickedness prevented me from being more than conveniently polite, he thought I was a cheeky little toad and I thought he was a bully, so we looked at each other and did not speak. We were both glad, therefore, when the train pulled up at the station that bore the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... plantation, I'd go over with any on you, and help to use up the lot myself! Let them 'come on,' as the tiger said to the young kid, and see what 'I'll do for you.' They talk of sending out their chaps here, do they; let them; they'll be just about as happy as a toad in hot tar, and that's a fact." Here Jonathan J. Twang sat down amid immense cheers; at the conclusion of which, Mr. Peter P. Pellican, from the back-woods, requested—he, Peter P. Pellican, being from Orleans—that Mr. Jonathan J. Twang would retract ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... prevents fits; and if given during a fit it will effect an immediate and permanent cure. A woman with rupture of the bladder was reported to have been cured by wearing a little bag hung about her neck containing the powder made from a toad burnt alive in a new pot. The same prescription was also said to have cured a man of ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... 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 back ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... 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 consult ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... 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
... 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
... the tree-toad, That to our yard has come, Is just a little wee toad No bigger than ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... behind a mahogany desk than he did on the street. He had a heavy jaw and a forehead-crinkling way of looking at a man. And—although Thompson knew nothing of the fact and at the moment would not have cared a whoop—John P. was just about the biggest toad in San Francisco's automobile puddle. He had started in business on little but his nerve and made himself a fortune. It was being whispered along the Row that John P. was organizing to manufacture cars as well as sell them—and that was a long look ahead ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in the garden now for humming-birds, and to see if the dirt-colored toad was still living in his "nest," ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... it the insistent chorus of tree-toad and katydid, interspersed with the song of the vesper sparrow. From the kitchen came the occasional rattle of dish or pan and the far-away murmur of voices. Patsy strained her ears for some sound of car or team upon the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... leave the 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 ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... witches and devils met for the celebration of blasphemous and obscene rites in an assembly known as the Witches' Sabbath. To enable themselves to ride to the meeting-place on broomsticks, the witches procured a communion wafer, applied a toad to it, burned it, mingled its ashes with the blood of an infant, the powdered bones of a hanged man and certain herbs. The meeting then indulged in a parody of the mass, for, so the grave doctors taught, as Christ had his sacraments the devil had his "unsacraments" or "execrements." His ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... moving in a brilliant society, although one belonging to a yet undiscovered world. Women whose political influence changes the map of Europe, irresistible Catholic priests are mingled with impudent adventurers and professional toad-eaters. And over every thing is cast, by d'Israeli's Eastern imagination, a glamour of unlimited wealth, of numberless coronets, and of soaring ambitions. The political career of the Earl of Beaconsfield is one of the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... time, when I was with that person, we saw, both of us, and others who were present also saw, something like a great toad crawling towards us, more rapidly than such a creature is in the habit of crawling. I cannot understand how a reptile of that kind could, in the middle of the day, have come forth from that place; it never had done so before, [5] but the impression it made on me was such, that I think it ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... across the earth's floor, 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 ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... and horrible sickness. The people, in their predisposition to believe in all sorts of extraordinary and rare afflictions, were certain that they knew what this was. Visanteta had a toad in her stomach. She had drunk from a certain spot of the near-by river, and the wicked animal, small and almost unnoticeable, had gone down into her stomach, growing fast. The good neighbors, trembling with stupefaction, flocked ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 along ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... flat skate with pale undersides edged with a soft red, and superb backs bumpy with vertebrae, and marbled down to the tautly stretched ribs of their fins with splotches of cinnabar, intersected by streaks of the tint of Florentine bronze—a dark medley of colour suggestive of the hues of a toad or some poisonous flower. Then, too, there were hideous dog-fish, with round heads, widely-gaping mouths like those of Chinese idols, and short fins like bats' wings; fit monsters to keep yelping guard over the treasures ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... tree-toad that began it. In a careless moment he had come down to the bench that connects the big maple tree with the old locust stump, and when I went out at dusk to wait for Jonathan, there he sat, in plain ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... in this country are two species of Frog, two species of Toad, and four Newts. They are not only most absolutely harmless, but, the frogs, at any rate, and toads, are ministers to man; and they belong to a class of animals more interesting than any other, perhaps, in the whole range of natural history. We are all well acquainted with the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... no!" Miss Stapylton answered, with utmost unconcern; "I would sooner marry a toad. Why, didn't you know, Olaf? I thought, of course, you knew you had been introducing athletics and better manners among the peerage! That sounds like a bill in the House of Commons, doesn't it?" Then Miss Stapylton laughed again, and appeared to be in a state of agreeable, though somewhat nervous, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Uncle Eb, 'er we'll never git out o' the woods t'night 'S 'bout six mile er more t' Paradise Road, es I mek it. Come, yer slower 'n a toad ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... mines if you would make me a 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 out, preeminently, as ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... snare was of wire, so constructed that the hare entangled itself the more when trying to escape, and it was placed across the little roads through the fields to which hares confine themselves, with a heavy stone attached to it by a string. Once Gavin caught a toad (fox) instead of a hare, and did not discover his mistake until it had him by the teeth. He was not able to weave for two months. The grouse-netting was more lucrative and more exciting, and women engaged in it with ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... have seen it higher than my head; that is, at least six feet. Beneath its spreading shade in the south lurks the Gila Monster, terrible in name at any rate, a fearful object to look upon, a remnant of antediluvian times, a huge, clumsy, two-foot lizard. The horned toad is quite as forbidding in appearance, but he is a harmless little thing. Here we are in the rattlesnake's paradise. Nine species are found along the Mexican border; and no wonder. The country seems made for them,—the rocks, cliffs, canyons, ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... a teacup! We have thousands of them at our house!" David boasted. "I should think you would rather have the toad. I'll— I'll give you ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... for I cherish the greatest respect towards everybody's religious obligations, never mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue even a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other creatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of footmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the torso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the inordinate possessions yet owned and rented ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... into another channel. Crushed under his leather girdle was a little cape, or a garment of that kind, of velvet so lustrous that it shone in the dark place where I saw it, as the eyes shine in a toad. Nor it only: before he rolled over and hid it again, I espied embroidered on one corner of the velvet ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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 a ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... but as the result of 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 society in which he ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... we'd made up our minds that that was the way to work this job. It wouldn't pay us to go around huntin' for Jerry's money. He was such a sharp old fellow, it was six to four we'd never find it. He sat up in bed with a jump like a hop-toad, and looked first at one and then at the other of us. We both had masks on, and it wasn't puzzlin' to guess ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... 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 ...
— Dew Drops Vol. 37. No. 17, April 26, 1914 • Various
... craft. He damps the spirits of the poor lads he commands by keeping them on the defensive, whilk of itself implies inferiority or fear. Now will they lie on their arms yonder as anxious and as ill at ease as a toad under a harrow, while our men will be quite fresh and blithe for action in the morning. Well, good-night. One thing troubles me, but if to-morrow goes well off, I will consult you about ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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, ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... in mathematics; Professor Du Bois, in history; Dr. Bowen, in theology; Professor Turner, in science; nor Mr. Tanner in art. There is no repugnance to the Negro buffoon, and the Negro scullion; but so soon as the Negro stands forth as an intellectual being, this toad of American prejudice, as at the touch of Ithuriel's spear, starts up ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... gets 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 the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... one who could write all his despatches, and conduct his affairs, without his giving himself the least trouble about anything; a person who, to the merit of serving him well, could join the baseness of being the toad-eater of his gentlemen, without honor, merit, or principles. He wished to retain, and humble me, by keeping me far from my country, and his own, without money to return to either, and in which he would, perhaps, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... have twice the number of senses appointed to 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... jar you!" muttered Tubby, sprawled on the back of his horse very much after the manner of a great toad. "Here we hardly get started on our wonderful trip over the battlefields of Belgium before we're held up, and told to fade away. Huh! talk to me about luck, we seem to ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... now examined. She had received the cat and kept it "a great while in woll in a pot." She had then turned it into a toad. She had used it to kill geese, hogs, and cattle of her neighbors. At length she had employed it to kill a neighbor whom she disliked, and finally her own husband. The woman's eighteen-year-old daughter, Joan, was now called to the stand and confirmed the fact that ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... 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
... this wondrous sabre, shape of toad is on the hilt, On the blade a toad is graven, and the scabbard ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Jerry did, so we put away the things again and went out under the hemlock tree to talk about the Castaway. Greg didn't come, and we supposed he'd gone to feed a tame toad he had that year, or something. The toad lived under the syringa bush beside the gate, and Greg insisted that it came out when he whistled for it, but it never would perform when we went on purpose to watch it, so I don't know whether it ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... of Mark's. She expected him to be no ordinary man, and she was not mistaken. Berrand was much older than Mark. He looked about forty. He was thin, sallow, eager in manner, with shining eyes—almost toad-like—a yellowish-white complexion, and coal-black hair. His vivacity was un-English, yet at the back of his nature there lay surely a stagnant reservoir of melancholy. He was a pessimist, full of ardour. He revelled, intellectually, in the sorrows and ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... went up to the castle with her. When he reached the keep, he went off to the witch queen's bower, and when he saw her, he touched her with a twig of a rowan tree. No sooner had he touched her than she shrivelled up and shrivelled up, till she became a huge ugly toad, with bold staring eyes and a horrible hiss. She croaked and she hissed, and then hopped away down the castle steps, and Childe Wynd took his father's place as king, and they all ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Thorny Road of Honor In a Thousand Years The Brave Tin Soldier The Tinder-box The Toad The Top and Ball The Travelling Companion Two Brothers ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... is, should wit larded with malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to? To an ass, were nothing: he is both ass and ox. To an ox, were nothing: he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a put-tock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... one else, but he was not to interfere with my pupil. He agreed to this, but either he selected a stupid subject, or his mode of teaching was not good, for he made wonderfully little progress. For a week he was trying to teach his pupil Tommy Toad, as he called him, three letters of the alphabet, and at the end of the time he could not tell B from C. Mr Talbot took care also that we should not be idle, and kept us knotting and splicing and doing all sorts of work aloft. We were approaching our port, and were congratulating ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon the cushions of the boat, which had drifted idly about since early twilight, the night's sounds were indescribably peaceful. The lap and purl of water, the rustle of birch, the call of an owl in the forest, the noise of frog and tree toad and innumerable crickets, they were all, paradoxically enough, the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... girl: 'She is enraged at the Harlowes;' she is 'angry at her own mother;' she is exasperated against her foolish and low-vanity'd Lovelace.' FOOLISH, a little toad! [God forgive me for calling such a virtuous girl a toad!]—'Let us stoop to lift the wretch out of his dirt, though we soil our fingers in doing it! He has not been guilty of direct indecency to you.' It seems extraordinary to Miss Howe that I have not. —'Nor dare he!' ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "Not it, the little toad, but 'twas saving he as ricked her back somehow, and made her a cripple for life, as you see, ma'am; and she was six months in the hospital, till the doctor, he say as how he couldn't do nothing more for her, so Hewlett ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... but even in that critical moment, justice insisted that Lark's arguments were sound. The professor had certainly asked the scholars to bring him "things to cut up." But a toad! A live one!—And the Ladies' ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... 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 think they know ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... ascendancy at college, and last night I fell into the old way of playing chorus to his high tragedy. This will not do, and I must assert myself. He was much the better student of course, but I have knocked about and seen more of the world than he has, shut up in these woods like a toad in a tree. He is too good a sort to go to seed with his confounded whimseys; so I determined to take a different tone with him. And I wrote to my wife about it: Mabel is a competent woman, and sometimes has very good ideas where mine fail—though ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... than the others. Were it not that ears are not represented in reptiles, one would be tempted to regard the smaller appendages as representations of these organs. Their similarity to the row of spines on the back and the existence of spines on the head of the "horned toad" suggests this reptile, with which both ancient and modern Hopi are very familiar. On a fragment of a vessel found at Awatobi there is depicted the head of a reptile evidently identical with this, since the drawing is an almost perfect reproduction. There is a like figure, also from Sikyatki, in ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... a little girl who is alarmed by a toad on the edge of a pool or stream of water, called Needless Alarms, appeared at the same time; and was so much admired by the President's colleague, Sir John Everett Millais, that he wished to purchase it, whereupon ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... moreover, now fell in ecstasy with their eyes dilated and their limbs quivering with convulsions, but these only saw the devil. A whirlwind of madness seemed to be passing over the region. An old lady of Lourdes declared that Bernadette was simply a witch and that she had herself seen the toad's foot in her eye. But for the others, for the thousands of pilgrims who hastened to the spot, she was a saint, and they kissed her garments. Sobs burst forth and frenzy seemed to seize upon the souls of the beholders, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola |
