Word: toadding
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...resigned from the bank in 1908, when he was 49. Four months later he published a tale about a mole, a water rat and a scapegrace toad, called The Wind in the Willows. The London Times wrote stiffly that "as a contribution to natural history, the work is negligible." But Grahame's fable caught on with such varied readers as Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm, came to be one of those rare books recognized by both children and adults as a children's classic. It still sells about 80,000 copies a year...
...steaming, close atmosphere of growing things. Perhaps as a result, his imagery has an easy intimacy with slugs, birds, frogs, snakes, and in his deep disaffection for the world of men, he often seems happier to inhabit that simpler world. "I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another," he writes. "With bats, weasels, worms-I rejoice in the kinship...
...England that is roughshod yet full of rural graces. The only thing that troubles the towhead Wart (Arthur-to-be) is the commonly accepted notion that he is a bastardly blot on the escutcheon of a country squire named Sir Ector. whose proper son Kay is an unamiable toad. Sir Ector wants both lads to acquire a good "eddication." An old "tilting blue," he believes that "the battle of Crecy [was] won upon the playing fields of Camelot." A tutor is engaged-a dotty old geezer with a pointed hat and hornrimmed glasses named Merlyn...
...Toad on the Road...
Five gets you ten that Packard's satchel-mouthed "Hawk" hits the street under the name of "The Toad...