Word: toad
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...envy the unfriended toad...
...done did it." Between now and November, moreover, his audiences are not apt to hear him describe his opponent, as some Plains folk might, as "a sorry piece of plunder" or threaten to "knock the bark off' him or talk of getting "mad as a puffed toad...
...with idiosyncratic antecedents going back to Queen Victoria. King Victor II, a frustrated M.D., is on the throne. Married to Isabella of Spain, father of Prince Albert and Princess Louise, he lives in Buckingham Palace, where a practical joker is at work. The jokes seem harmless at first: a toad is placed on a covered plate for the King's breakfast (when the butler sees it, he faints). Then the jokes get nastier, ending in two murders...
Virginia's correspondence eased her loneliness. Much of it seems to have been written only to get letters in return. Desperate for affection, often in the most childish way, she created pet names for all her correspondents. Her cousin Emma Vaughan was variously "Toad", "Todkins", and "Toadlebinks"; her sister Vanessa was "Dolphin", "Sheepdog" or just "Nessa"; her brother Thoby was "Gribbs", "Grim", "Herbert", or "Thobs"; and she signed herself just about anything: "Billy Goat", "Goat", "Goatus Esq.", "Wallaby", "Kangaroo", "Apes", and so forth. Over half the letters in this volume are addressed to Violet Dickinson, a six foot two spinster...
This is funny in a mechanical way, but it is more interesting as a deliberate contrast to the country-speech patterns still heard in black city lingo, and to the folklore half believed in and half smiled at. "Kill a frog or toad, dry him out completely in the sun . . . among his bones will be one that resembles a fish hook ... To win your intended lover, hook the fishbone into his clothing. . ." Faith Cross, a backwoods believer, journeys to Chicago and becomes first a wholehearted whore, then an adipose housewife, anesthetized by hair spray and appliance hum, then, cast...