"Toad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their set, by right of your famous Mr. Darrell; if ever you hear an artist, musician, scribbler, no matter what, ridiculed as a tuft-hunter,—seeking the great, and so forth,—before you join in the laugh, ask some great man's son, with a pedigree that dates from the Ark, 'Are you not a toad-eater too? Do you want political influence; do you stand contested elections; do you curry and fawn upon greasy Sam the butcher and grimy Tom the blacksmith for a vote? Why? useful to your career, necessary to your ambition? Aha! is it meaner to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I don't want to," added the new extra. "No, sir. I've got a job and I'm staying with it. I'll sit here like a horned toad till the boss gives me ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... in the stern of the boat had pestered the guide with her comments and questions ever since they had started. Her meek little husband, who was hunched toad-like in the bow, fished in silence. The old lady had seemingly exhausted every possible point in fish and animal life, woodcraft, and personal history when she suddenly espied one of those curious paths of oily, unbroken water ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... 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 ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... thinks that the Zapotec guache, translated by Seler "frog or toad," is more likely a variant ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... noxious to some animals is plain: for ducks, buzzards, owls, stone curlews, and snakes, eat them, to my knowledge, with impunity. And I well remember the time, but was not eye-witness to the fact (though numbers of persons were), when a quack, at this village, ate a toad to make the country people stare; ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... mind of him Shrinks, and falters and is dim When he tries to make it out: What the torture is about.— Why he breathes, a fugitive Whom the World forbids to live. Why he earned for his abode, Habitation of the toad! Why his fevered day by day Will not serve to drive away Horror that must always haunt:— ... Want ... Want! Nightmare shot with waking pangs;— Tightening coil, and certain fangs, Close and closer, always nigh ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... haughtily withdrawn from such vulgar entertainments as the city now alone afforded. The famous and choleric physician, Dr. Radcliffe, in revenge for some slight he had endured, had threatened to "throw a toad into King Bladud's Well," by writing a pamphlet against the medicinal efficacy of ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the reign of dust, and be playground withal for manifold destroyers. Often the tiny mouse builds his house and makes his granaries underground, or the eyeless mole scoops his cell; and in chinks is found the toad, and all the swarming vermin that are bred in earth; and the weevil, and the ant that fears a destitute old age, plunder the great ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... concerned, as most men are, with making a living. The idea of poverty chafed him. He had once been a considerable toad in a sizable puddle. He had inherited a competence and lost it, and power to reclaim it was beyond him. He wasted no regrets upon the loss of that material security, although he sometimes wondered how Myra had contrived to let such a sum slip through her fingers in a little over two ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... call him," said Priscilla. "But, of course, he may be one of those cases of a heart of gold inside a rough skin. You can't be sure. We did 'As You Like It' last Christmas—dramatic club, you know—and Sylvia Courtney had a bit to say about a toad ugly and venomous which yet wears a precious jewel in his head. I'd say he's just the opposite. If there is a precious jewel—and there may be—it's not in his head. Anyhow one great comfort is that he doesn't remember ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... wandered farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom my friends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in my trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its own waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes at the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his head on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well, and whose death nearly broke my heart, ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... such things annoy us. Anyway, we expected to reach camp just after noon, so a little delay about dinner didn't seem so bad. We had entered the desert by noon; the warm, red sands fell away from the wheels with soft, hissing sounds. Occasionally a little horned toad sped panting along before us, suddenly darting aside to watch with bright, cunning eyes as we passed. Some one had placed a buffalo's skull beside a big bunch of sage and on the sage a splendid pair of elk's antlers. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... that a tree-toad can change color more easily," he observed to the old cniht who rode at his side. "That Englishmen are not stout fighters, no man can say, but the love of it is not in ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... all day. Max and I kept losing. I always knew Armitage was a pompous toad, but I never realized ...
— Competition • James Causey
... angels" or spirits, with the various titles of kings, dukes, &c., prelates and knights, of which the head was Baal, "who, when he was conjured up, appeared with three heads, one like a man, one like a toad, and one like a cat." The title of king conferred no extra power; indeed, Agares, "the first duke, came in the likeness of a faire old man, riding upon a crocodile, and carrying a hawk on his fist"—Marbas, who appeared in the form of a "mightie lion"—Amon, "a great and mightie ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... 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 ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... anything half so amiable as good afternoon, but she took her departure. As she swept past the minister a large, plump toad, which Carl had secreted under the lounge, hopped out almost under her feet. Mrs. Davis gave a shriek and in trying to avoid treading on the awful thing, lost her balance and her parasol. She did not exactly fall, but she staggered and reeled across the ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to a family in easy circumstances; "I can be happy at my ease! I love Aquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself, am going to marry Mme. de la ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... he came in sight of the sinister triangular building which crouches, toad-like, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, Vanderlyn's heart failed him for the first time. If Peggy were indeed lying there exposed to the careless, morbid glances of idle sightseers to whom the Morgue is one of the sights of Paris, he felt that he could not trust ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... time a cook. Born in 1767. Earned a considerable amount of money, but previously had lost heavily in a lottery. After the suppression of this game of chance she saved up for the benefit of a nephew. In her divinations Mme. Fontaine made use of a giant toad named Astaroth, and of a black hen with bristling feathers, called Cleopatra or Bilouche. These two animals caught Gazonal's eye in 1845, when in company with De Lora and Bixiou he visited the fortune-teller's. The Southerner, however, asked only a five-franc ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... gone for ten days, O Delectable One. Hold up your near forefoot and I'll impress the fact upon it, warty toad of a dried mud- puddle.' Deesa took a tent-peg and banged Moti Guj ten times on the nails. Moti Guj grunted and ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... her wings, The toad has the road, the cricket sings: The bat is the rover, No bee on the clover, The day is ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... 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 Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... length upon the handkerchief, with the remainder of which he lapped me up to the head for further security, and in this manner carried me home to his house. There he called his wife, and showed me to her; but she screamed and ran back, as women in England do at the sight of a toad or a spider. However, when she had awhile seen my behavior, and how well I observed the signs her husband made, she was soon reconciled, and by degrees grew ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... o'erween. I learnt some lessons from the fowls: To shun solemnity, from owls; Another lesson from the pie,— Pert and pretentious, and as sly; And to detest man's raids and mulctures, From eagles, kites, goshawks, and vultures; But most of all abhorrence take From the base toad or viler snake, With filthy venom in the bite, Of envies, jealousies, and spite. Thus from Dame Nature and Creation Have I deduced my observation; Nor found I ever thing so mean, That gave no moral ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... itself gaily to saw wood, and on into the plains, where it would soberly carry grain to town; yet the real strength of the fable is when it dealt with the shut pool in which certain unfortunate raindrops are imprisoned among slugs and snails, and in the company of an old toad. The sodden contentment of the fallen acorn is strangely significant; and it is astonishing how unpleasantly we are startled by the appearance of ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Gwynplaine an interlude, with which he was well pleased. It was his best work. He had thrown his whole soul into it. To give the sum of all one's talents in the production is the greatest triumph that any one can achieve. The toad which produces a toad achieves a grand success. You doubt it? Try, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... melons, was so much infested with ants, as to threaten the 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 be found.—Corresp. ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... must not forget my horned toad, Diego, that I got in California. I keep him in the green-house, and he is very happy catching flies and holding his horny head to be scratched whenever ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... tributaries, and its plateau were being uplifted from the primeval ocean, it consisted of nothing but a wild, barren waste of rock. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a blade of grass relieved the monotony of the wilderness of rocks which emerged from the great Eocene sea. Not a lizard, horned toad, centipede, tarantula, chuckwalla, campamouche,* frog, tree-toad, turtle or snake was to be found on the long stretching areas of its lifeless shores. Not a chipmunk, prairie-dog, coyote, rat, mouse, porcupine, fox, bear, mountain-lion, badger, deer, antelope or other ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... he had made in our gateway. The thing moved forward with a dreadful snarl. Lord John never hesitated, but, running towards it with a quick, light step, he dashed the flaming wood into the brute's face. For one moment I had a vision of a horrible mask like a giant toad's, of a warty, leprous skin, and of a loose mouth all beslobbered with fresh blood. The next, there was a crash in the underwood and ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Here, Lucy, you come along with me," and walked off to the place where the toads were, as if there were no Maggie in existence. Lucy was naturally pleased that Cousin Tom was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string, when the toad was safe down the area, with an iron ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous
... said a jolly Dominican in his ear, "that toad's blood was never hot." It certainly looked like it. The Captain scratched ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... him, nevertheless, to a sort of confession of some weakness, that he could not analyze for the swirl of emotional thoughts in the way; and they had him to the ground. An eagle of the poetic becomes a mere squat toad through one of these pretty material strokes. Where then is Philosophy? But who can be philosopher and the fervent admirer of a glorious lady? Ask again, who in that frowzy garb can presume to think of her or stand within fifty miles ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dan laughed 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 ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Exploration Society, and we must keep an account of all 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 and a mushroom?" ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... scamper for flowers, over the ragged ascent from whence the boulders came. Everywhere about is the trumpet creeper, but not yet in bloom. The Indian turnip is in blossom here, and so the smaller Solomon's seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hillside, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... casual operations of party spirit. Lord Glenelg's case showed that colonial secretaries were punished when they got into bad messes, and his passion for messes was punished, in the language of the journals of the day, by the life of a toad under a harrow until he was worried out of office. There was, however, no force in public opinion to prevent the minister from going wrong if he liked; still less to prevent him from going right if he liked. Popular feeling was coloured by no wish ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... sake, light the fire. As for the rent, John, do not waste this trifle on that," whispered Vivian, slipping his purse into his hand, "for I will see Stapylton Toad, and get time. Why, woman, you'll never strike a light, if your tears drop so fast into the tinder-box. Here, give it me. You are not fit to work to-day. And how is the trout in Ravely Mead, John, this hot ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... old Chinese and Japanese literature the toad is credited with supernatural capacities,—such as the power to call down clouds, the power to make rain, the power to exhale from its mouth a magical mist which creates the most beautiful illusions. Some toads are good spirits,—friends ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... the texture of uncut velvet. The former carried an excellent pack, which put mine to shame; the latter bore a boy's saddle, and the two were being fed with great bread crusts by a bewitching young woman of about twenty-six or -eight, wearing one of the toad-stool hats affected by the donkey-women of Mentone. She looked up at our approach, and having surveyed the pack and proportions of Finois with cold scorn, her interest in our procession incontestably focused upon Joseph. She tossed her head a little on one side, shot at the muleteer an arrow-gleam, ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... "Well, the owld toad wasn't so bad, afther all. She had some good in her, for she sent the angel to our door—good ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... would go off along the white road that led to Garchester, and on to Crogate and so to Tunbridge Wells, where there was a Toad Rock he had heard of, but never seen. (It seemed to him this must needs be a marvel.) And so to other towns and cities. He would walk and loiter by the way, and sleep in inns at night, and get an odd job here and there and talk to strange people. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... with a whip, until the latter is half dead. Wotan and Loge, hearing his complaints, promise to help him. Alberich, coming forth again, is greatly flattered by Wotan and dexterously led on to show his might. He first changes himself into an enormous snake and then into a toad. Wotan quickly puts his foot on it, while Loge seizes the Tarnhelm. Alberich becoming suddenly visible in his real shape, is bound and led away captive. The gods return to the mountain-heights of the second ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... with his own eyes the calamity which had befallen the watch that had been destined to minister such consolation to his time- inquiring mind, he took me gingerly, and stared at me as if I had been a toad ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... tale is the Basque legend of the orphans, Izar (seven years old) and Lanoa (nine years old), and their adventures with Satan and the witches,—how Izar cured the Princess and killed the great toad which was the cause of her complaint, and how Lanoa defied Satan to his face, meeting death by his action, but gaining ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... associated with "Old Town," the former San Diego, three miles from the present city. He had offended Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, by his irreverent wit, and was punished by exile to this then almost unknown region, which he called "Sandy Ague," chiefly inhabited by the flea, the horned toad, and the rattlesnake. Mr. Ames, of the Herald, a democratic paper, asked Derby, a stanch whig, to occupy the editorial chair during a brief absence. He did so, changing its politics at once, and ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... I, jist before it went out o' my mind—'maybe he thinks that'll stop the pistol from goin' off by accident;' for ye must know he'd let it off three times the first day by accident, an' well-nigh blowed off his leg the last time, only the shot lodged in the back o' a big toad he'd jist stuffed into his breeches pocket. Well, soon after we shot a buffalo bull, so when it fell, off he jumps from his horse an' runs up to it. So did I, for I wasn't sure the beast was dead, an' I had jist got up when it rose an' ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... she could, she found her child gone and the dog too. But on looking round, she saw pieces of the wampum of her child's cradle bit off by the dog, who strove to retain the child and prevent his being carried off by an old woman called Mukakee Mindemoea, or the Toad-Woman. The mother followed at full speed, and occasionally came to lodges inhabited by old women, who told her at what time the thief had passed; they also gave her shoes, that she might follow on. There were a number of these old women, who seemed as if they were all prophetesses. Each of ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... singularly free, there being recorded only eleven species—five saurians, four ophidians, one frog and one toad—but a more thorough survey of the uninhabited territories of the south may increase this list. There are no alligators in the streams, and the tropical north has very few lizards. There are no poisonous snakes in the country, and, in a region so filled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... most 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 a harrow with ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... his fingers, "I don't care a damn for you in either capacity. You keep the child here at your peril! I'll go to the first lawyer in Rubbleford, and bring an action against you. I'll show you a little legal law! You ruin me indeed! I can prove that I only thrashed the little toad, the nasty deaf idiot, because she deserved it. I'll be even with you! I'll have the child back wherever you take her to. I'll show you a little legal law! (Here he stepped to the hall door.) I'll be even with you, damme! I'll charge ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... 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 soon ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... the northward of Port Stephens, and he had been thirty-two days in travelling to this place from there. He had had two companions, one of whom, he said, was killed by the natives, the other had eaten a toad fish and died. The emotions that he felt on meeting his countrymen can be better imagined than described. "The laugh and the tear had their repeated place in turns, and his first utterance was, 'I ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... feeling along the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysterious position to be thus submerged in opaque blackness in an almost unknown town. The silence is terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold window bars to the exploring hand startles the man like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pavement shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses put on strange and bewildering appearances, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Racey, seizing the bridle short and yanking the bouncing horse to a standstill with a swerve and a jerk that almost unseated its rider. "You be careful how you talk, you—hop toad!" ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... as that of unkindness 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.' In this manner did the patient duke draw a useful moral from everything that he saw; and by the help of this moralizing turn, in that life of his, remote from public haunts, he could find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth-point goes. The butterfly upon the road ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... round about young Tom?" queried one of the men in the miners' caucus. "Might' nigh every other word with old Caleb was, 'Tom; my son, Tom.' Why, I riccollect him when he wasn't no more'n knee-high to a hop-toad!" ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... was quite as bad. Mother gave him a book with very nice pictures, particularly of beasts. The chief reason she got it for him was that there was such a very good picture of a toad, and Chris is so fond of toads. For months he made friends with one in the garden. It used to crawl away from him, and he used to creep after it, talking to it, and then it used to half begin to crawl up the garden wall, and stand so, on its hind legs, and let Chris rub its wrinkled back. The ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the application of living toads to them; and a man has been known to swallow one of these abominations for a wager, taking care, however, to follow this horrid meal by an immediate and copious draught of oil. But the very glance of the toad has been supposed fatal; of its entrails fancied poisonous potions have been concocted; and for magical purposes it was believed extremely efficacious; a precious stone was asserted to be found in its head, invaluable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... its mother? They're sore as a toad at me, an' I expect that goes for any other Ranger too. Homer might give us an even break because we stayed with him on the island, but I'd hate to bet ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... the north wind loves to hold His dreary revels, loud and cold, The nettle's bloom's his daily fare, The TOAD the guest ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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.)
... hardly united 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 ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... a very short time. I 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 ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... 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 take a picture ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... be worded by a wench," said I. And at this I am most entirely sure that she would have cast her joint-stool at me, had she not been sitting on 't, and my lady's head against her knee. So she called me a "zany," and then after a little a "toad," but went on stroking ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... Jew refused, saying, "A gift cannot be recalled. Moreover, I will now explain to thee its uses. Within the jar lies a toad, whose spit is poison. But it will never spit at its master. Every evening thou must feed it with bread and milk, when it will fall asleep; and at sunrise in the morning it will awake and breathe heavily against the ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... still held Juan's, by degrees Gently, but palpably confirmed its grasp, As if it said, "Detain me, if you please;" Yet there's no doubt she only meant to clasp His fingers with a pure Platonic squeeze; She would have shrunk as from a toad, or asp, Had she imagined such a thing could rouse A feeling dangerous ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... skinning the adder, taking the fat, and boiling it; the result is a clear oil, which never thickens in the coldest weather. One of these reptiles on being killed and cut open was found to contain the body of a full-grown toad. The old belief that the young of the viper enters its mouth for refuge still lingers. The existence of adders in the woods here seems so undoubted that strangers should be a little careful if they leave the track. Viper's ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the churchwoman, he related how, when imprisoned for popping a toad into the soup, he had escaped over the leads, and had beaten a drum outside the barn, during a discourse of the godly tinker, John Bunyan, tramping and rattling so that all thought the troopers were come, and rushed out, tumbling one over the other, while he yelled out his "Ho! ho! ho!" ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... TOAD.—You may expect deceit and the discovery of disagreeable facts; this sign should caution you to be on your guard, for malicious talking causes much discomfort and may separate ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... species, nor of the large number of distinct forms related to each and grouped into natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great when I was ... able to identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax, and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly understood, enabled me to locate each fresh species ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... or do anything for a living, as we would say at home; and they mainly occupy the sea-shore, living on whatever mussels they can manage to pick up, and the blubber of any occasional fish they come across. I'm told they also eat that toad-stool we see growing on the beech trees; and if they'd do that, they'd eat anything! Sometimes they venture out long distances to sea in their rude canoes, like catamarans, which they contrive out of a couple of ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... gardener shut the 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 ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... beginning to be sought for by every orchestra in Europe, Russia would suddenly have none of him! Nicholas Rubinstein fought his losing battles somewhat daunted by the constant cries of "hypocrite" and "toad-eater." Kashkine filled foreign journals with his praises. Useless! Henceforth, for many years, the concerts at the Moscow theatre, now under the baton of Laroche, knew Gregoriev's name no more: until that day, indeed, when, with his last and supreme effort, by means of the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... seen her as I did, gliding among the rubbish of the ruined hut, looking about her on all sides, muttering I know not what! Oh, but she has frightened me very much! If she had seen me, I was a lost man. She would have changed me into a lizard, a toad, or a bat. She took a paltry herb—the paltriest I ever saw—of a pale sickly yellow, with red and black marks, like the flames, as they say, of hell. The horror of the thing is, that the whole stalk was hairy like a man, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... those of his own coat; Which made his brethren of the gown Take care betimes [3] to run him down: No libertine, nor over nice, Addicted to no sort of vice; Went where he pleas'd, said what he thought; Not rich, but owed no man a groat; In state opinions a la mode, He hated Wharton like a toad; Had given the faction many a wound, And libell'd all the junto round; Kept company with men of wit, Who often father'd what he writ: His works were hawk'd in ev'ry street, But seldom rose above a sheet: Of late, indeed, the paper-stamp Did very much his genius ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Champignions in fricase, or Mushrooms, which is all one thing; they are called also Fungi, commonly in English Toad Stools. ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... alive in the liquor she threw, And loud shrieked the toad as in pieces it flew: And ever, the cauldron as over she bent, She muttered strange ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... are poisonous at all seasons, as the toad-fish (Apistes marmoratus); others are only occasionally so; and the degree of poisonous effect would seem to depend not only upon the state of the fish, but to vary very much in different persons who partake of them at the same time. There is nothing, however, in these properties of the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... easier than to learn it, your majesty," whispered the countess, "squat like a toad, close to the ear of Eve"—"the letter ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... in the mummy case underneath, and well out of sight. Cockatoo had come down stream with The Firefly, and in this way had not been discovered. Throughout that long day the miserable Braddock had crouched like a toad in its hole, trembling at every sound of pursuit, as he knew that the whole of the village was looking for him. But Cockatoo had hidden him well in the case, in the lid of which holes had been bored. He had brandy to drink and food to eat, and he knew that he could depend upon ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... has hard work to choke down a toad, and the crocodile has a mighty struggle to take in the calf; but the monster of which I speak can swallow anything. It has a throat bigger than the whale that took down the minister who declined the call to Nineveh, and has swallowed whole presbyteries and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... your face. It gives out light. Now I see your hands. Now I can see your feet. Yes, I can see every spot where you are going to—No, don't put your foot there. There is an ugly toad just there." ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... parted company with Whitecup after getting him roaring full hoping he would squeal what bait he used—but he was tight as a tick and mum as a toad. ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... went along for some time, and just as he got to a place where there was a large stone, all of a sudden out popped a big fat toad. And it wasn't a nice toad, ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... and scarf, and sitting behind her chair through five long acts of a dull play; because I disappointed her in not searching for her at every drum and quadrille party; because I admired not her monkey; and because I broke a teapot with a toad for ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It was here that the little toy-seller had vanished. But it was exactly like a thousand, a hundred thousand other such street-shrines on Wolf, a smudge of incense reeking and stinking before the squatting image of Nebran, the Toad God whose face and symbol are everywhere on Wolf. I stared for a moment at the ugly idol, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... A toad can die of light! Death is the common right Of toads and men, — Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... fly away with the toad and the ugly smile of him!" Morty said. "I'm thinking it's between the two of us, Phelim, my jewel! And he that's ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... had seen me from the caboose, and at the next stop a few miles farther on, Rock Springs, the shack stuck his head into my box and said: "Hit the grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also he grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit the grit all right, and the orange special and the ...
— The Road • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... "Of money you mean, Toad," she answered, kicking him with her slippered foot. "I had to listen to your talk of love while we journeyed together, and before, but here I need not, and if you speak of it again you shall go living into that baker's ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Lord's sake! Don't look any more like Clayte than it does like a horned toad. Is that what you've been wasting your time over, Boyne? If ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... a definition of the beautiful by saying, “Ask a toad what his ideas of beauty are. He will indicate the particular female toad he happens to admire and praise her goggle-eyes and yellow belly as the perfection of beauty!” A negro from Guiana will make much the same unsatisfactory answer, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... father is dreaming of!" she said one day, when she had sat for some time looking at Dolly, who was drawing. "He seems to think it quite natural that you should live down here at this cottage, year in and year out, like a toad in a hole; with no more life or society. We might as well be shut up in a nunnery, only then there would be more of us. I never heard of a nunnery ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... [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 ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... from Lorraine or a kindly nod from Jack. Tricasse, utterly unbalanced by his new role of protector of beauty, gave orders in fierce, agitated whispers, and made sudden aimless promenades around the birch thicket. In one of these prowls he discovered a toad staring at the camp-fire, and he drew his sword with a furious gesture, as though no living toad were good enough to intrude on the Chatelaine of the Chateau de Nesville; but the toad hopped away, and Tricasse unbent his brows ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... behind me, 'tarnal death to him, and roused me out of my snuggery. Well, sodger, then I jumps into the cane, and next into the timber; for I reckoned all Injun creation war atter me. And so I sticks fast in a lick; and then to sumtotalise, I wallops down a rock, eend foremost, like a bull-toad: and, 'tarnal death to me, while I war scratching my head, and wondering whar I came from, I heerd the crack of the guns across the river, and thought of anngelliferous madam. 'Tarnal death to me, sodger, it turned me wrong side out! and while ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... she wore as part of her attire had no effect in this way: even gold, when it thus became as it were a part of herself, lost all its weight for the time. But whatever she only held in her hands retained its downward tendency. On this occasion she could see nothing to catch up but a huge toad, that was walking across the lawn as if he had a hundred years to do it in. Not knowing what disgust meant, for this was one of her peculiarities, she snatched up the toad and bounded away. She had almost reached her father, and ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... the lawyer. His face had become expressionless. His shoulders had humped forward. He reminded his companion of some animal who instinctively draws itself together to avoid the enemy's detection. So a tree-toad clings against the bark. So a porcupine rolls itself into a ball. To Miss Lacey the latter simile would have been more appealing. She dreaded the arrows he ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... smaller things came to worry us more and more. A certain harmless singer of the cricket or perhaps of the tree-toad variety used to chirp his innocent note a short distance from our cabin. For all I know he had done so from the moment of our installation, but I had never noticed him before. Now I caught myself listening for his irregular recurrence with every nerve on the quiver. If he delayed by ever ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... before 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 space with ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... were sometimes used. The editor is possessed of a small relique, termed by tradition a toad-stone, the influence of which was supposed to preserve pregnant women from the power of daemons, and other dangers incidental to their situation. It has been carefully preserved for several generations, was often pledged for considerable sums of money, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... have already cautioned you not to be duped by appearances. A hanger on is a sort of sycophant, or toad-eater, and, in the coffee-houses and hotels of London, many such are to be found—men who can spin out a long yarn, tell a tough story, and tip you a rum chant—who invite themselves by a freedom of address bordering on impudence to the tables and the parties of persons they ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 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
... 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 ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... about her and that blackguard Slotman," he thought. "There is something about that man—snake—toad—something uncanny. She's there; she has money and he's out for money. If I can sit here and tell myself that I have scared Slotman from offending and annoying her again, I am an idiot. When there's money to be gained, a man like Slotman will want a lot ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster-shell; If things that promise nothing do contain What better is than gold; who will disdain, That have an inkling of it, there to look, That they may find it? Now, my little book, ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... "hellweed," or "devil's 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 ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... 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
... first, in being together after that, in all things beside. Never was tea so refreshing, or bread and butter so sweet, or the song of birds so delightsome. When the birds were gone to their nests, the cricket and grasshopper, and tree-toad and katydid, and nameless other songsters, kept up a concert nature's own in delicious harmony with woods and flowers, and summer breezes and evening light. Ellen's cup of enjoyment was running over. From one beautiful thing to another her eye wandered from one joy to another ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Professor Kelly Miller 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, ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... was improving, that the English gentlemen were very different from the horse-racing, cock-fighting Virginian squires, with whom Master Harry would associate, and the lawyers, and pettifoggers, and toad-eaters at the lieutenant-governor's table. Madam Esmond had a very keen eye for detecting flatterers in other folks' houses. Against the little knot of official people at Williamsburg she was especially satirical, and had no patience with their ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... particular objection in detail to your excellent scheme of Government. My only objection is a quite personal one. It is, that if I were asked whether I would belong to it, I should ask first of all, if I was not permitted, as an alternative, to be a toad in a ditch. That is all. You cannot argue with the choice of ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... when the liver is diseased it is necessary to cure it with just the opposite remedies, and the opponent of Peneter-Deva being Sebek, [Planet Mercury] to give quicksilver, emerald, and agate, hazel-wood and coltsfoot, also parts of the body of a toad and an owl rubbed ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Weir's pompous air; and Ken realized that the same reason accounted for his own attitude toward them. He wanted very much to tell Raymond that he was a little grouch and Weir that he looked like a puffed-up toad. All the same Ken was not blind to Weir's handsome appearance. The sturdy youngster had an immense head, a great shock of bright brown hair, flashing gray eyes, and ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... The vampire was evidently afraid of the bee's sting, and was holding it by the throat till quite sure of its death. Virgil speaks of the painted lizard, perhaps a species of salamander, as an enemy of the honey-bee. We have no lizard that destroys the bee; but our tree-toad, ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and our kingbird has been charged ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... who liveth nigh unto them liveth nigh unto black pools, wherein the toad singeth his ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 'twill pour! I hope 'twill pour!" Purred the tree-toad at his gray bark door, "For, with a broad leaf for a roof, I ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... 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 ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... he, "be not beguiled by yon foul witches' arts: go not to Hangstone Waste lest she be-devil thee with goblins or transform thee to a loathly toad. Thou wilt ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... just like you told me to, and them cussed sawboneses won't let me go back no more," Shade reported to Pap Himes that evening. "Old Pros just swelled hisself out like a toad and hollered at me time I got in the room. He's sure crazy all right. He looks like he couldn't last long, but them that heirs what he has will git the writin' that tells whar the silver mine's at. Johnnie's liable to find that writin' any day; or he may ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... 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, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... so I have heard said by more parsons than one. If your la'ship hath such a violent aversion, and hates the young gentleman so very bad, that you can't bear to think of going into bed to him; for to be sure there may be such antipathies in nature, and one had lieverer touch a toad than ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others; those national repugnances do not touch me, nor ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... room, while the recruiting sergeant measured and prodded him. And now he was a deserter. Was there any sense to it all? Had his life led in any particular direction, since he had been caught haphazard in the treadmill, or was it all chance? A toad hopping across a road in front of a ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... furious otter, wishing to kill whoever had put the fire out. While its anger was at its highest the otter perceived a toad, which was accused of extinguishing the fire because its legs were as ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... do, or 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. Upton could tell me. ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... about your knowing that, you little toad!" growled Simon, who in spite of himself had compassion on the pale face of the child that looked up to him so innocently and inquiringly. "Up the staircase ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... feelings, when she knows she 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
... me, you toad! but let us not talk of things that happened under the Tudors. Well, I have not been unreasonably blind,—and I do not object,—and I do not believe ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... toad-flax. 459 Sudden and frequent origin in the wild state. Origin in the experiment-garden. Law of repeated mutations. Probable origin ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... 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 fuel to make a fire. The Indians, I knew, ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 road; ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer |
