54 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
idea, for toads, like pine-snakes, convey absolutely 
no appeal to his narrow, flower-bound nature. 
I have erected a monument in the shape of a chest- 
nut stake beside Mr. Toad’s winter residence, and I 
strongly suspect that he will be the last of his family 
to get up when the spring rising-bell finally rings. 
“There’s positively nothing to this early-rising 
business,”’ I can hear him telling his friends at the 
Puddle Club in April. ‘‘Look at what happened to 
me. If it had n’t been for a well-meaning giant, I 
would have caught my death of cold from getting 
out of bed too soon. Never again!”’ 
Our calendar-makers use red letters to mark special 
days. Personally, I prefer orchids and birds and 
sunrises and nests and snakes and similar markers. 
I have in my diary “The Day of the Prothonotary 
Warbler,” “The Day of the Henslow’s Sparrow’s 
Nest”’ (that was a day!), ““The Day of the Fringed 
Gentian,” and many, many others. But always and 
forever that snowy 21st of December is marked in 
my memory as “The Day of the Early Toad.” 
Once more I was climbing the Cobble. The wood- 
road on which I started had narrowed to a path. 
Overhead masses of rock showed through the snow, 
and above them were the dark depths of the Bear- 
Hole where Great-great-uncle Jake had once shot 
with his flintlock musket the largest bear ever killed 
in that part of the state. It was here at the cliff 
side that Shahrazad snow told me another story. 
Along the edge of the slope ran a track made up of 
four holes in the snow. The front ones were far 
