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