Sketches New and Old | Page 9

heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his
praise by one unlucky experiment? What I refer to is this: he says my
jumping Frog is a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever
really convulse any one with laughter--and straightway proceeds to
translate it into French in order to prove to his nation that there is
nothing so very extravagantly funny about it. Just there is where my
complaint originates. He has not translated it at all; he has simply
mixed it all up; it is no more like the jumping Frog when he gets
through with it than I am like a meridian of longitude. But my mere
assertion is not proof; wherefore I print the French version, that all may
see that I do not speak falsely; furthermore, in order that even the
unlettered may know my injury and give me their compassion, I have
been at infinite pains and trouble to retranslate this French version back
into English; and to tell the truth I have well-nigh worn myself out at it,
having scarcely rested from my work during five days and nights. I
cannot speak the French language, but I can translate very well, though
not fast, I being self- educated. I ask the reader to run his eye over the
original English version of the jumping Frog, and then read the French
or my retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has
riddled the grammar. I think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the
French are called a polished nation. If I had a boy that put sentences
together as they do, I would polish him to some purpose. Without
further introduction, the jumping Frog, as I originally wrote it, was as
follows [after it will be found the French version--(French version is

deleted from this edition)--, and after the latter my retranslation from
the French]

THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY
[Pronounced Cal-e-va-ras]
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 on 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 to death with some exasperating reminiscence him
as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the
design, it succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of
the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp 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 that 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
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 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
his 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.' I let him go on
in his own way, and never interrupted him once.

"Rev. Leonidas W. H'm, Reverend Le--well, 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 warn't finished when he first come 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