From the book  Arms’ Crossroads – Wallington  pages 18-19 by The Wallington Cobblestone Schoolhouse Restoration Committee 1982

This story is about very strange happenings in a Wallington Hotel in the late 1800s. Charles Lent and his wife Laura had built a hotel in the 1870s that serviced tired train passengers in need of a place to stay before continuing their journey.

HOP TOAD

The hotel was a beautiful structure of twenty-seven rooms and a ballroom, and it too had its stories as the half-way house had had before it. One that was told to me by the late John Bestard went like this: John said, “My mother was once an employee of Mr. Lent’s and she worked in the kitchen much of the time. You see, there was an old wine cellar that held a number of huge wine barrels, and under one of these barrels lived a little toad. She told me that one of the barrels used to drip every few hours or so, and when it seemed time for it to drip, all the girls would sneak down the cellar steps and sit so they could see the drippy barrel. When the drip finally fell, that little toad would all of a sudden jump out and catch it with his tongue. The toad would sit there day after day catching drops. I bet they had the only alcoholic toad in the country!” He said that no matter how many times you saw the show, it was just as amusing as the first. I don’t know if this is true, but it is fun Just to think so.