The Jumping Frog
Mark Twain
Paperback
(CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, Jan. 14, 2017)
Mark Twain's "The Jumping Frog : In English, then in French, then clawed back into the civilized language once more by patient unremunerated toil" (1865), also known as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog. The narrator is sent by a friend to interview an old man, Simon Wheeler, who might know the location of an old acquaintance named Leonidas W. Smiley. Finding Simon at an old mining camp, the narrator asks him if he knows anything about Leonidas; Simon appears not to, and instead tells a story about Jim Smiley, a man who had visited the camp years earlier. Jim loves to gamble and will offer to bet on anything and everything, from horse races to dogfights to the health of the local parson's wife. He catches a frog, whom he names Dan'l Webster and trains to jump, on which training he spends three months.
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