beast never knows the pleasure of a real drink, 

 because he does not know how to drink. 



I have kept toads confined in cages for weeks 

 at a time, never allowing them water when I 

 could not watch them closely, and I never saw 

 one drink. Instead, they would sprawl out in 

 the saucer on their big, expansive bellies, and 

 soak themselves full, as they did here on the 

 damp sand about the pump. 



Just after sunset, when the fireflies light up and 

 the crickets and katydids begin to chirp, the toad 

 that sleeps under my front step hops out of bed, 

 kicks the sand off his back, and takes a long look 

 at the weather. He seems to think as he sits 

 here on the gravel walk, sober and still, with 

 his face turned skyward. What does he think 

 about? Is he listening to the chorus of the 

 crickets, to the whippoorwills, or is it for supper 

 he is planning f It may be of the vicissitudes of 

 toad life, and of the mutability of all sublunary 

 things, that he meditates. Who knows? Some 

 day perhaps we shall have a batrachian psychol- 

 ogy, and I shall understand what it is that my 

 door-step lodger turns over and over in his mind 

 as he watches the coming of the stars. All I can 

 [315] 



