My Queer Neighbor Mr. Toad

My Queer Neighbor - Mr Toad By Mrs. C. R. Colby

Once upon a time as the story-tellers say, there was a toad who wanted to build a house. He was a queer old fellow, with a brown warty back, and great black, bead-like eyes.

He would sit all day under the large leaves, and at dusk go hopping around in his clumsy fashion, catching bugs and beetles for his supper

But when mid-summer came with its fierce heat, he had a notion in that queer head of his, that he [want - crossed out] [ed - crossed out] wanted to build a house, just as wiser folks do.

So he began to look around among the plants in the door yard where he lived, for he did not seem to know just where he wanted to build his house.

But he kept trying so as to find out - a wise thing to do, as little girls and boys may learn.

First he tried a box of ferns, and dug a deep hole in the soft earth, throwing out the dirt, and the bright green fronds, in a way that I did not quite like. Well he buried himself under the earth, in the box making a saucer-like hollow, just large enogh to fit his body, for that is the way that toads have in building a house.

Now I have a bad habit, that my neighbor, Mr. Toad did not quite like either. He did not like a cool shower bath, the first thing after he had moved into his new house, for the roof of earth, is very thin.

But ferns do like a nice bath every morning and I like to give it to them.

Mr. Toad, when he felt the big drops come

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pattering down on his soft roof, and wetting his queer brown coatl, winked first one eye, and then the other; and I presume he said to himself "Why will that horrid old thing act so" "And very likely he thought it was done just to vex him.

Very funny it was to see him writhe and dodge the drops as they fell, and try to back down deeper into his hole, to go down cellar if he had one. And then he would try to throw up more earth over his rough brown back.

"Well," he said to himself, "this pretty box of ferns is no place for me."

And the next night he moved himself, for he left his saucer-like home among the ferns, to tell that a toad had lived there.

The next morning I found him deep under the earth in a pot of calla lilies. I know he was there, by the looks of the loose earth, through he was out of sight. He had dug deeper than before, and was thinking, "now I am safe from the touch of a drop of water."

But calla lilies like the water just as well as ferns do; for, do they not remember their home by the river's brink, and so, poor Mr. Toad had to get now and then a drop whether he wanted it or not.

I do not believe he thought "Sweet are the uses of adversity." for he loooked just as fierce as a toad can look, as he tried to throw the earth over him and to dodge the falling drops

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next morning, he had tried a new home. A pot of amarylis stood near the calla, and he had buried himself half way to the bottom of it.

But that too, loved the water, as all flowers do, and had to have its daily drink. And so Mr. Toad could not escape a bath in his new home.

The next night he tried a pot of carnations but with the same sad fate. He found that into all flower pots "some rain must fall; "that where ever he moved, among the fern, under the lilies, or amid the carnations, it was "water, water every where."

And so he kept changing his home every night for weeks. He could not tell which suited him best, or which was the worst. But he was quite sure that in one of those three flower pots he meant to make a home.

But finally he got disgusted, and packed up, and moved away, where watering pots are unknown, and I saw my queer little neighbor no more. If he has not "gone west," I dare say I shall see him again in the spring.

Flint, MIchigan