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The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County
By Mark Twain
In
compliance
with
the
request
of
a
friend
of
mine,
who
wrote
me
from
the
East,
I
called
on
good-natured,
garrulous
old
Simon
Wheeler,
and
inquired
after
my
friend's
friend,
Leonidas
W.
Smiley, as requested to
do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a
lurking suspicion that Leonidas
W.
Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a
personage; and that he only conjectured that,
if I asked old Wheeler about him, it
would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and
he would go
to work and bore me nearly
to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as
long and tedious as it
should be
useless to me. If that was the design, it
succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing
comfortably by the barroom stove of the old,
dilapidated tavern in
the
ancient
mining
camp
of
Angel's,
and
I
noticed
that
he
was
fat
and
bald-
headed,
and
had
an
expression of winning
gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil
countenance. He roused up and
gave me
good-day. I told him a friend of mine had
commissioned me to make some inquiries about a
cherished
companion
of
his
boyhood
named
Leonidas
W.
Smiley
—
Rev.
Leonidas
W.
Smiley
—
a
young minister of the Gospel, who he
had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's
Camp. I added
that, if Mr. Wheeler
could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W.
Smiley, I would feel under
many
obligations to him.
Simon
Wheeler
backed
me
into
a
corner
and
blockaded
me
there
with
his
chair,
and
then
sat
me
down and
reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows
this paragraph. He never smiled, he
never frowned, he never changed his
voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he
tuned the initial
sentence, he never
betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm;
but all through the interminable
narrative there ran a vein of
impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed
me plainly that, so
far from his
imagining that there was anything ridiculous or
funny about his story, he regarded it as a
really important matter, and admired
its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in
finesse. To me,
the spectacle of a man
drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn
without ever smiling, was
exquisitely
absurd.
As
I
said
before,
I
asked
him
to
tell
me
what
he
knew
of
Rev.
Leonidas
W.
Smiley, and he replied as follows. I
let him go on in his own way, and never
interrupted him once:
There was a
feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the
winter of
'49
—
or maybe it
was the
spring of
'50
—
I
don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what
makes me think it was one or the
other
is
because
I
remember
the
big
flume
wasn't
finished
when
he
first
came
to
the
camp;
but
anyway, he was the curiousest man about
always betting on anything that turned up you ever
see, if
he could get anybody to bet on
the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change
sides. Any way that
suited the other
man would suit him
—
any way
just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But
still he
was lucky, uncommon lucky; he
most always come out winner. He was always ready
and laying for
a chance; there couldn't
be no solit'ry thing mentioned but that feller'd
offer to bet on it, and take any
side
you please, as I was just telling you. If there
was a horse race, you'd find him flush, or you'd
find him busted at the end of it; if
there was a dogfight, he'd bet on it; if there was
a cat-fight, he'd
bet on it; if there
was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there
was two birds setting on a fence,
he
would
bet
you
which
one
would
fly
first;
or
if
there
was
a
camp
meeting,
he
would
be
there
reg'lar, to bet on
Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best
exhorter about here, and so he was,
1
too, and a good man. If he
even seen a straddlebug start to go anywheres, he
would bet you how long
it
would
take
him
to
get
wherever
he
was going
to,
and
if
you
took
him
up,
he
would
foller
that
straddlebug to Mexico
but what he would find out where he was bound for
and how long he was on
the road. Lots
of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can
tell you about him. Why, it never made
no difference to
him
—
he would bet on
anything
—
the dangdest
feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very
sick once, for a good while, and it
seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but
one morning he
come in, and Smiley
asked how she was, and he said she was
considerable better
—
thank
the Lord
for his inf'nit
mercy
—
and coming on so smart
that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get
well
yet; and Smiley, before he
thought, says,
Thish-yer Smiley had a
mare
—
the boys called her the
fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun,
you know, because, of course, she was
faster than that
—
and he used
to win money on that horse, for
all she
was so slow and always had the asthma, or the
distemper, or the consumption, or something
of that kind. They used to give her two
or three hundred yards start, and then pass her
under way; but
always
at
the
fag
end
of
the
race
she'd
get
excited
and
desperate-like,
and
come
cavorting
and
straddling up, and scattering her legs
around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes
out to one
side amongst the fences, and
kicking up m-o-r-e dust, and raising m-o-r-e
racket with her coughing
and sneezing
and blowing her nose
—
and
always fetch up at the stand just about a neck
ahead, as
near as you could cipher it
down.
And he had a little small bull
pup, that to look at him you'd think he wan't
worth a cent, but to set
around and
look ornery, and lay for a chance to steal
something. But as soon as money was up on
him, he was a different dog; his
underjaw'd begin to stick out like the fo-castle
of a steamboat, and
his
teeth
would
uncover,
and
shine
savage
like
the
furnaces.
And
a
dog
might
tackle
him,
and
bullyrag
him,
and
bite
him,
and
throw
him
over
his
shoulder
two
or
three
times,
and
Andrew
Jackson
—
which
was
the name
of
the
pup
—
Andrew
Jackson
would
never
let
on
but
what
he
was
satisfied,
and
hadn't
expected
nothing
else
—
and
the
bets
being
doubled
and
doubled
on
the
other
side all the time,
till the money was all up; and then all of a
sudden he would grab that other dog jest
by the j'int of his hind leg and freeze
to it
—
not chaw, you
understand, but only jest grip and hang on
till they throwed up the sponge, if it
was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that
pup, till he
harnessed a dog once that
didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been
sawed off by a circular saw,
and when
the thing had gone along far enough, and the money
was all up, and he come to make a
snatch for his pet holt, he saw in a
minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other
dog had him
in the door, so to speak,
and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked
sorter discouraged-like, and
didn't try
no more to win the fight, and so he got shucked
out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as
to say his heart was broke, and it was
his fault for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind
legs for him to
take holt of, which was
his main dependence in a fight, and then he limped
off a piece and laid down
and died. It
was a good pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would
have made a name for hisself if
he'd
lived,
for
the
stuff
was
in
him,
and
he
had
genius
—
I
know
it,
because
he
hadn't
had
no
opportunities to speak
of, and it don't stand to reason that a dog could
make such a fight as he could
under
them circumstances, if he hadn't no talent. It
always makes me feel sorry when I think of that
last fight of his'n, and the way it
turned out.
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-
tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats, and all
them kind of things,
till
you
couldn't
rest,
and
you
couldn't
fetch
nothing
for
him
to
bet
on
but
he'd
match
you.
He
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