My mother would never even let us make fun of the dog. I think she was affected in her youth by this poem, which is in one of the few books I have from her childhood. It had been so heavily used that its covers had to be replaced with pink fabric long before I got my hands on it.
THE FROG
Be kind and gentle to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As ‘Slimy skin’, or ‘Polly-wog’,
Or likewise ‘Ugly James’,
Or ‘Gap-a-grin’, or ‘Toad-gone-wrong’,
Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a Frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).
Hilaire Belloc
