“So well known is the toad’s usefulness that in England the animal is an article of commerce. Toads are bought in the market at so much a head, carried home carefully so as not to come to any harm, and then allowed the freedom of the garden or placed in a hothouse, a crystal palace, perhaps, where wonderful plants are grown. The toad’s business is to lie in wait for beetles, slugs, and other destroyers that might nibble the valuable plants; and it does its duty with zeal. What a change of fortune for the maligned creature when it finds itself living in a warm atmosphere and surrounded by the most splendid flowers procured at great expense from all parts of the world and now exhaling the most fragrant odors! As a finishing touch to the honor done the poor thing in its floral palace of glass, there is offered the tribute of poetry, that flower of the human imagination and invention. Listen to this. “A wretched toad with head split open and one eye gouged out by some cruel hand was painfully dragging itself along through the mud of a public highway, when four small boys chanced to spy it as they were passing. “They spied the toad, And one and all sent up a gleeful shout: ‘Come on, come on, let’s kill the ugly lout! But first we’ll have some fun.’ They laughed their fill, As boys will laugh, hard-hearted, when they kill. They pricked and goaded with a pointed stick, Devising each in turn some cruel trick, Flushed with their sport, egged on by passers-by, While for the martyred toad none gave a sigh. Poor ugly thing! But nature made it so; For this alone its blood was caused to flow. It tried to flee; one foot was severed quite, Which gave the heartless band renewed delight. Its gouged-out eye hung down; half-blind it sought Some sheltering reeds; its efforts came to naught. Its mangled form had been, you would have sworn, Through some machine, to be so rent and torn. And, oh, to think that hearts can be so base As to wish ill to one in such sad case, And to so great a load of suffering sore To undertake to add one torment more! Well-nigh exhausted now, hope almost gone, The half-dismembered creature still toiled on. E’en death itself would not, for pity’s sake, So hideous a thing consent to take; Or thus it seemed, and so with antics rude The toad’s tormentors still their sport pursued. Attempts to snare it next were made in vain: It dodged, and sought a rut half filled with rain; And, by its muddy bath somewhat restored, Withstood the missiles that upon it poured. Ah, what a sight was there, the beauty fresh Of childhood, and its joy in bleeding flesh! Such sport as theirs there surely ne’er had been: ‘Come on,’ they called, ‘come John, come Benjamin! And bring a stone, a big one, and we’ll see If Master Toad is quite as smart as we.’