p503-016 MY WATCH. AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 017. In-line image of Mark Twain standing at the counter of a jeweler. The jeweler is examining Twain's watch with a magnifying glass, as Twain looks on uncomfortably.[end figure description]

MY beautiful new watch had run
eighteen months without losing
or gaining, and without
breaking any part of its machinery or
stopping. I had come to believe it
infallible in its judgments about the
time of day, and to consider its constitution
and its anatomy imperishable.
But at last, one night, I let it
run down. I grieved about it as if it
were a recognized messenger and forerunner
of calamity. But by-and-by I
cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions
to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 018. In-line image of Twain standing on a train platform, his bag by his side, staring at his watch in horror as the train he was supposed to catch is departing in the distance.[end figure description]

time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to
set it for me. Then he said, “She is four minutes slow—regulator wants pushing
up.” I tried to stop him—tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect
time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four
minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced
around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and
cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and
faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse
went up to a hundred and fifty in the
shade. At the end of two months it
had left all the timepieces of the
town far in the rear, and was a
fraction over thirteen days ahead of
the almanac. It was away into November
enjoying the snow, while the
Octoberleaves were still turning.
It hurried up house rent, bills payable,
and such things, in such a ruinous way
that I could not abide it. I took it
to the watchmaker to be regulated. He
asked me if I had ever had it repaired.
I said no, it had never needed
any repairing. He looked a look of
vicious happiness and eagerly pried
the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its
machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating—come in a
week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to
that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed
all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days'
grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday,
then day before, then into last week, and by-and-by the comprehension came upon
me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 019. In-line image of Twain again talking to the jeweler about his watch. The jeweler is pointing to something in the open-faced watch, while Twain grips the counter in horror.[end figure description]

world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellowfeeling
for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him. I
went to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and
then said the barrel was “swelled.” He said he could reduce it in three days.
After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go
like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing, and whooping and
sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and
as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance
against it. But the rest of the day it
would keep on slowing down and
fooling along until all the clocks it
had left behind caught up again.
So at last, at the end of twenty-four
hours, it would trot up to the judges'
stand all right and just in time. It
would show a fair and square average,
and no man could say it had
done more or less than its duty. But
a correct average is only a mild virtue
in a watch, and I took this instrument
to another watchmaker. He
said the kingbolt was broken. I said
I was glad it was nothing more serious.
To tell the plain truth, I had
no idea what the kingbolt was, but I
did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but
what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then
stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about
the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded
my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He
picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and
then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair-trigger. He

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes
to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time
forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make
head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the
thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring
was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed halfsoling.
He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably,
save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight
hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee,
and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their
individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web
over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in
six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one
more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared
to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had
cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three
thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in
this watchmaker an old acquaintance—a steamboat engineer of other days, and not
a good engineer either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other
watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence
of manner.

He said—

“She makes too much steam—you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the
safety-valve!”

I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.

My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a
good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch
until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of
all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and
blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.

p503-020 POLITICAL ECONOMY.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 021. In-line image of Twain standing outside of his house in a dressing gown with a writing quill behind his ear, listening to a tall man dressed in black with a stovepipe hat on his head. The man is gesturing grandly towards the house. Twain looks perplexed.[end figure description]

Political Economy is the basis of all
good government. The wisest men of all
ages have brought to bear upon this subject
the—

[Here I was interrupted and informed
that a stranger wished to see
me down at the door. I went and confronted
him, and asked to know his
business, struggling all the time to keep
a tight rein on my seething political
economy ideas, and not let them break
away from me or get tangled in their
harness. And privately I wished the
stranger was in the bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him.
I was all in a fever, but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

as he was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, “Yes, yes—
go on—what about it?” He said there was nothing about it, in particular—nothing
except that he would like to put them up for me. I am new to housekeeping; have
been used to hotels and boarding-houses all my life. Like anybody else of similar
experience, I try to appear (to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently
I said in an off-hand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or
eight lightning-rods put up, but— The stranger started, and looked inquiringly
at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any mistakes, he
would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would rather have my custom
than any man's in town. I said, “All right,” and started off to wrestle with my
great subject again, when he called me back and said it would be necessary to
know exactly how many “points” I wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted
them on, and what quality of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not
used to the exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and he
probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up eight “points,”
and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod. He said he could
furnish the “plain” article at 20 cents a foot; “coppered,” 25 cents; “zinc-plated
spiral-twist,” at 30 cents, that would stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter
where it was bound, and “render its errand harmless and its further progress
apocryphal.” I said apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source
it did, but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand.
Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do it right,
and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration of the just and the
unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they never saw a more symmetrical and
hypothetical display of lightning-rods since they were born, he supposed he really
couldn't get along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted
he was willing to try. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind
of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work. So I got rid of him
at last; and now, after half-an-hour spent in getting my train of political economy
thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on once more.]

richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their learning. The great lights of
commercial jurisprudence, international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, all
civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to Horace Greeley, have—

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

[Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further with
that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging with prodigious thoughts
wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them was in itself a straggling
procession of syllables that might be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once
more I confronted him—he so calm and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was
standing in the contemplative attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on
my infant tuberose, and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his
hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and admiringly
in the direction of my principal chimney. He said now there was a state of things
to make a man glad to be alive; and added, “I leave it to you if you ever saw anything
more deliriously picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?” I
said I had no present recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that
in his opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way of
natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make my house a
perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other chimneys a little, and
thus “add to the generous coup d'œil a soothing uniformity of achievement which
would allay the excitement naturally consequent upon the first coup d'état.” I
asked him if he learned to talk out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere?
He smiled pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books,
and that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his
conversational style with impunity. He then figured up an estimate, and said that
about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix me right, and he
guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that the first eight had
got a little the start of him, so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more
than he had calculated on—a hundred feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful
hurry, and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that I
could go on with my work. He said, “I could have put up those eight rods, and
marched off about my business—some men would have done it. But no: I said to
myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die before I'll wrong him; there
ain't lightning-rods enough on that house, and for one I'll never stir out of my
tracks till I've done as I would be done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty
is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

your”— “There, now, there,” I said, “put on the other eight—add five hundred
feet of spiral-twist—do anything and everything you want to do; but calm your
sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them with the dictionary.
Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will go to work again.”

I think I have been sitting here a full hour, this time, trying to get back to where I
was when my train of thought was broken up by the last interruption; but I believe
I have accomplished it at last, and may venture to proceed again.]

wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have found it a worthy adversary, and
one that always comes up fresh and smiling after every throw. The great Confucius said that he
would rather be a profound political economist than chief of police. Cicero frequently said that
political economy was the grandest consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming;
and even our own Greeley has said vaguely but forcibly that “Political—

[Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me. I went down in a
state of mind bordering on impatience. He said he would rather have died than
interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that job was expected to
be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it was finished and fatigue
urged him to seek the rest and recreation he stood so much in need of, and he was
about to do it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the calculations had been
a little out, and if a thunder storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt
a personal interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen
lightning-rods— “Let us have peace!” I shrieked. “Put up a hundred and
fifty! Put some on the kitchen! Put a dozen on the barn! Put a couple on the
cow!—Put one on the cook!—scatter them all over the persecuted place till it
looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted cane-break! Move! Use
up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning-rods
put up ram-rods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods—anything that will pander
to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain
and healing to my lacerated soul!” Wholly unmoved—further than to smile
sweetly—this iron being simply turned back his wristbands daintily, and said “He
would now proceed to hump himself.” Well, all that was nearly three hours ago.
It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble theme of
political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it is the one subject that

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of all this world's philosophy.]

“— economy is heaven's best boon to man.” When the loose but gifted Byron lay in his Venetian
exile he observed that, if it could be granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again,
he would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition, not of frivolous rhymes, but
of essays upon political economy. Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker,
Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even imperial Homer, in the ninth
book of the Iliad, has said:—

The grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the felicity of the wording which
clothes them, and the sublimity of the imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that
stanza, and made it more celebrated than any that ever—

[“Now, not a word out of you—not a single word. Just state your bill and
relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these premises. Nine
hundred dollars? Is that all? This check for the amount will be honored at any
respectable bank in America. What is that multitude of people gathered in the
street for? How?—`looking at the lightning-rods!' Bless my life, did they never
see any lightning-rods before? Never saw `such a stack of them on one establishment,'
did I understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this
popular ebullition of ignorance.”]

Three Days Later.—We are all about worn out. For four-and-twenty hours
our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town. The theatres languished,
for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and commonplace compared
with my lightning-rods. Our street was blocked night and day with spectators, and
among them were many who came from the country to see. It was a blessed relief
on the second day, when a thunder-storm came up and the lightning began to “go
for” my house, as the historian Josephus quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries,
so to speak. In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of
my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full, windows,
roof, and all And well they might be, for all the falling stars and Fourth-of-July

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 026. In-line image of Twain's house being hit with lightning strikes as men flee wildly down the street. The entire roof of the house is covered with lightning rods, which are absorbing all of the strikes.[end figure description]

fireworks of a generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out of
heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof, would not have any advantage
of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous
in the general gloom of the storm. By actual count, the lightning struck
at my establishment seven hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but
tripped on one of those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral twist and
shot into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the thing
was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates was ripped
up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in the vicinity were transporting
all the lightning they could possibly accommodate. Well, nothing was ever
seen like it since the world began. For one whole day and night not a member

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

of my family stuck his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched off
it as smooth as a billiard-ball; and if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever
dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an end—because
there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling
distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen
together, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped
of all their terrific armament except just three rods on the house, one on the
kitchen, and one on the barn—and behold these remain there even unto this day.
And then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. I will
remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not continue my essay
upon political economy. I am not even yet settled enough in nerve and brain to
resume it.

To Whomit May Concern.—Parties having need of three thousand two hundred
and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and
sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped points, all in tolerable repair (and,
although much worn by use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a
bargain by addressing the publisher.

p503-027 THE “JUMPING FROG. ”

IN ENGLISH. THEN IN FRENCH.
THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A
CIVILIZED LANGUAGE ONCE MORE
BY PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED
TOIL.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 028. In-line image opening the chapter on the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. The top image is of two men racing frogs and trying to get them to jump. The man on the left is well-dressed and prodding his frog with a stick. The man on the right is dressed in work clothes, trousers and suspenders with a wide-brimmed hat, and looking at the other man as his frog leaps forward. The lower image is of a frog sitting on a river bank next to cat-tails. [end figure description]

EVEN a criminal is entitled
to fair play; and certainly
when a man who has done
no harm has been unjustly treated,
he is privileged to do his best to
right himself. My attention has
just been called to an article some
three years old in a French Magazine
entitled “Revue des Deux
Mondes” (Review of Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of “Les
Humoristes Americaines” (These Humorists Americans). I am one of these

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

humorists Americans dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making.

This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French, where
they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you start into a sentence
you never know whether you are going to come out alive or not). It is a
very good article, and the writer says all manner of kind and complimentary
things about me—for which I am sure I thank him with all my 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 anyone 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 re-translate 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 re-translation,
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, and after
the latter my re-translation from the French]:

THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS* COUNTY.

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

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 030. In-line image of Twain sitting knee-to-knee with Simon Wheeler. Wheeler is looking rather angry and Twain is staring at him, mouth agape.[end figure description]

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 to death with some exasperating reminiscence of
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 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 Leondias W. Smiley—
Rev. Leondias 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 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 may be 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

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 031. In-line image of a horse-race, with the center of the image taken up with a wild looking horse, surrounded by clouds of dust. In the distant background is another racer watching this horse from his carriage.[end figure description]

warn't finished when he first come to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest 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 ary 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 dog-fight, 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 too, and a good man. If he even see
a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he
would bet you how long it would take
him to get to—to wherever he was going
to, and if you took him up, he would foller
that straddle-bug 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'd bet on any
thing — 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 up and asked him how she was, and he said she was considable 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, “Well, I'll resk two-and-a-half she don't anyway.”

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

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

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 warn'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 under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat,
and his teeth would uncover and shine 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 just 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 did'nt have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in 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 see 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 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 tom-cats 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 ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so he
never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And
you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd
see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple,
if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the
matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur
as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything—
and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor—Dan'l Webster
was the name of the frog—and sing out, “Flies, Dan'l, flies!” and quicker'n you could wink
he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 033. In-line image of the jumping frog. The frog is facing forward, with back legs poised to leap, front legs open and resting, and eyes wide.[end figure description]

solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as
as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so
modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square
jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his
breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous
proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres, all said he
laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down town sometimes
and lay for a bet. One day a feller—a stranger in the camp, he was—come acrost him with his box,
and says:

“What might it be that you've got in the box?”

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, “It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe,
but it ain't—it's only just a frog.”

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says,
“H'm—so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?”

“Well,” Smiley, says, easy and careless, “he's good enough for one thing, I should judge—he can
outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley,
and says, very deliberate, “Well,” he says, “I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n
any other frog.”

“Maybe you don't,” Smiley says. “Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't understand'
em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've
got my opinion and I'll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.”

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, “Well, I'm only a stranger here,
and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you.”

And then Smiley says, “That's all right—that's all right—if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go
and get you a frog.” And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's,
and set down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and
prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot—filled him pretty near
up to his chin—and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the
mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller,
and says:

“Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws just even with Dan'l's, and
I'll give the word.” Then he says, “One—two—three—git!” and him and the feller touched up
the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up
his shoulders—so—like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use—he couldn't budge; he was planted as
solid as a church, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good
deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course.

The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at the door, he sorter
jerked his thumb over his shoulder—so—at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well,” he says
“I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.”

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says,
“I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for—I wonder if there ain't something the
matter with him—he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan'l by the nap
of the neck, and hefted him, and says, “Why blame my cats if he don't weigh five pound!” and
turned him upside down and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it
was, and he was the maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never
ketched him. And—”

[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 035. In-line image of the well-dressed man holding his frog upside-down by a back leg. He is wide-eyed with surprise as a copious amount of buckshot pours out of the frog's mouth.[end figure description]

wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and
rest easy—I ain't going to be gone a second.”

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond
Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley,
and so I started away.

At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button-holed me and re-commenced:

“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a short
stump like a bannanner, and—”

However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow, but
took my leave.

Now let the learned look upon this picture and say if iconoclasm can further go:

[From the Revue des Deux Mondes, of July 15th, 1872.]

LA GRENOUILLE SANTEUSE DU COMTE DE CALAVERAS.

“—Il y avait une fois ici un individu connu sous le nom de Jim Smiley: c'était dans l'hiver de
49, peut-être bien au printemps de 50, je ne me rappelle pas exactement. Ce qui me fait croire que

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

c'était l'un ou l'autre, c'est que je me souviens que le grand bief n'était pas achevé lorsqu'il arriva
au camp pour la premiére fois, mais de toutes façons il était l'homme le plus friand de paris qui se
pût voir, pariant sur tout ce qui se présentait, quand il pouvait trouver un adversaire, et, quand il
n'en trouvait pas il passait du côté opposé. Tout ce qui convenait à l'autre lui convenait; pourvu
qu'il eût un pari, Smiley était satisfait. Et il avait une chance! une chance inouie: presque toujours
il gagnait. Il faut dire qu'il était toujours prêt à s' exposer, qu' on ne pouvait mentionner la moindre
chose sans que ce gaillard offrît de parier là-dessus n'importe quoi et de prendre le côté que l'on
voudrait, comme je vous le disais tout à l'heure. S'il y avait des courses, vous le trouviez riche ou
ruiné à la fin; s'il y avait un combat de chiens, il apportait son enjeu; il l'apportait pour un combat
de chats, pour un combat de coqs;—parbleu! si vous aviez vu deux oiseaux sur une haie, il vous
aurait offert de parier lequel s'envolerait le premier, et, s'il y avait meeting au camp, il venait parier
régulièrement pour le curé Walker, qu'il jugeait être le meilleur prédicateur des environs, et qui
l'était en effet, et un brave homme. Il aurait rencontré une punaise de bois en chemin, qu'il aurait
parié sur le temps qu'il lui faudrait pour aller où elle voudrait aller, et, si vous l'aviez pris au mot, il
aurait suivi la punaise jusqu'au Mexique, sans se soucier d'aller si loin, ni du temps qu'il y perdrait.
Une fois la femme du curé Walker fut très malade pendant longtemps, il semblait qu'on ne la
sauverait pas; mais un matin le curé arrive, et Smiley lui demande comment elle va, et il dit qu'elle
est bien mieux, grâce à l'infinie miséricorde, tellement mieux qu'avec la bénédiction de la Providence
elle s'en tirerait, et voilà que, sans y penser, Smiley répond:—Eh bien! je gage deux et
demi qu'elle mourra tout de même.

“Ce Smiley avait une jument que les gars appelaient le bidet du quart d'heure, mais seulement
pour plaisanter, vous comprenez, parce que, bien entendu, elle était plus vite que ça! Et il avait
coutume de gagner de l'argent avec cette bête, quoiqu'elle fût poussive, cornarde, toujours prise
d'asthme, de coliques ou de consomption, ou de quelque chose d'approchant. On lui donnait 2 ou
300 yards au départ, puis on la dépassait sans peine; mais jamais à la fin elle ne manquait de
s'échauffer, de s'exaspérer, et elle arrivait, s'écartant, se défendant, ses jambes grêles en l'air devant
les obstacles, quelquefois les évitant et faisant avec cela plus de poussière qu'aucun cheval, plus de
bruit surtout avec ses éternumens et reniflemens,—crac! elle arrivait donc toujours première d'une
tête, aussi juste qu'on peut le mesurer. Et il avait un petit bouledogue qui, à le voir, ne valait pas
un sou; ou aurait cru que parier contre lui c'était voler, tant il était ordinaire; mais aussitôt les
enjeux faits, il devenait un autre chien. Sa mâchoire inférieure commençait à ressortir comme un
gaillard d'avant, ses dents se découvraient brillantes comme des fournaises, et un chien pouvait le
taquiner, l'exciter, le mordre, le jeter deux ou trois fois par-dessus son épaule, André Jackson, c'était
le nom du chien, André Jackson prenait cela tranquillement, comme s'il ne se fût jamais attendu à
autre chose, et quand les paris étaient doublés et redoublés contre lui, il vous saisissait l'autre chien
juste à l'articulation de la jambe de derrière, et il ne la lâchait plus, non pas qu'il la mâchât, vous
concevez, mais il s'y serait tenu pendu jusqu'à ce qu'on jetât l'éponge en l'air, fallût-il attendre un

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

an. Smiley gagnait toujours avec cette bête-là; malheureusement ils ont fini par dresser un
chien qui n'avait pas de pattes de derrière, parce qu'on les avait sciées, et quand les choses furent
au point qu'il voulait, et qu'il en vint à se jeter sur son morceau favori, le pauvre chien comprit en
un instant qu'on s'était moqué de lui, et que l'autre le tenait. Vous n'avez jamais vu personne
avoir l'air plus penaud et plus découragé; il ne fit aucun effort pour gagner le combat et
fut rudement secoué, de sorte que, regardant Smiley comme pour lui dire:—Mon cœur est
brisé, c'est ta faute; pourquoi m'avoir livré à un chien qui n'a pas de pattes de derriére, puisque
c'est par là que je les bats?—il s'en alla en clopinant, et se coucha pour mourir. Ah! c'était un
bon chien, cet André Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom, s'il avait vécu, car il y avait de l'etoffe en
lui, il avait du génie, je le sais, bien que de grandes occasions lui aient manqué; mais il est impossible
de supposer qu'un chien capable de se battre comme lui, certaines circonstances étant données,
ait manqué de talent. Je me sens triste toutes les fois que je pense à son dernier combat et au
dénoûment qu'il a eu. Eh bien! ce Smiley nourrissait des terriers à rats; et des coqs de combat, et
des chats, et toute sorte de choses, au point qu'il était toujours en mesure de vous tenir tête, et qu'avec
sa rage de paris on n'avait plus de repos. Il attrapa un jour une grenouille et l'emporta chez
lui, disant qu'il prétendait faire son éducation; vous me croirez si vous voulez, mais pendant trois
mois il n'a rien fait que lui apprendre à sauter dans une cour retirée de sa maison. Et je vous
réponds qu'il avait réussi. Il lui donnait un petit coup par derrière, et l'instant d'après vous
voyiez la grenouille tourner en l'air comme un beignet au-dessus de la poêle, faire une culbute,
quelquefois deux, lorsqu'elle était bein partie, et retomber sur ses pattes comme un chat. Il l'avait
dressée dans l'art de gober des mouches, et l'y exercait continuellement, si bien qu'une mouche, du
plus loin qu'elle apparaissait, était une mouche perdue. Smiley avait coutume de dire que tout ce
qui manquait à une grenouille, c'était l'éducation, qu'avec l'éducation elle pouvait faire presque
tout, et je le crois. Tenez, je l'ai vu poser Daniel Webster là sur ce plancher,—Daniel Webster
était le nom de la grenouille,—et lui chanter:—Des mouches! Daniel, des mouches!—En un clin
d'œil, Daniel avait bondi et saisi une mouche ici sur le comptoir, puis sauté de nouveau par terre, où
il restait vraiment à se gratter la tête avec sa patte de derrière, comme s'il n'avait pas eu la
moindre idée de sa supériorité. Jamais vous n'avez grenouille vu de aussi modeste, aussi naturelle,
douée comme elle l'était! Et quand il s'agissait de sauter purement et simplement sur terrain
plat, elle faisait plus de chemin en un saut qu'aucune bête de son espèce que vous puissiez conna
ître. Sauter à plat, c'était son fort! Quand il s'agissait de cela, Smiley entassait les enjeux
sur elle tant qu'il lui, restait un rouge liard. Il faut le reconnaître, Smiley était monstrueusement
fier de sa grenouille, et il en avait le droit, car des gens qui avaient voyagé, qui avaient tout vu,
disaient qu'on lui ferait injure de la comparer à une autre; de façon que Smiley gardait Daniel
dans une petite boîte à claire-voie qu'il emporta it parfois à la ville pour quelque pari.

“Un jour, un individu étranger au camp l'arrête avec sa boíte et lui dit:—Qu'est-ce que vous
avez donc serré là dedans?

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

“Smiley dit d'un air indifférent:—Cela puorrait être un perroquet ou un serin, mais ce u'est rien
de pareil, ce n'est qu'une grenouille.

“L'individu la prend, la regarde avec soin, la tourne d'un côté et de l'autre puss il dit.—Tiens!
en effet! A quoi est-elle bonne?

“—Mon Dieu! répond Smiley, toujours d'un air dégagé, elle est bonne pour une chose à mon
avis, elle peut battre en sautant toute grenouille du comté de Calaveras.

“L'individu reprend la boîte, l'examine de uouveau longuement, et la rend à Smiley en disant
d'un air délibéré:—Eh bien! je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
grenouille.

“—Possible que vous ne le voyiez pas, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous entendiez en greouilles,
possible que vous ne vous y entendez point, possible que vous ayez de l'expérience, et possible
que vous ne soyez qu'un amateur. De toute manière, je parie quarante dollars qu'elle battra
en sautant n'importe quelle grenouille du comté de Calaveras.

“L'individu réfléchit une seconde et dit comme attristé:—Je ne suis qu'un étranger ici, je n'ai
pas de grenouille; mais, si j'en avais une, je tiendrais le pari.

“—Fort bien! répond Smiley. Rien de plus facile. Si vous voulez tenir ma boîte une minute,
j'iral vous chercher une grenouille.—Voilà donc l'individu qui garde la boíte, qui met ses quarante
dollars sur ceux de Smiley et qui attend. Il attend assez longtemps, réfléchissant tout seul, et
figurez-vous qu'il prend Daniel, lui ouvre la bouche de force et avec une cuiller à thé l'emplit de
menu plomb de chasse, mais l'emplit jusqu'au menton, puis il le pose par terre. Smiley pendant
ce temps était à barboter dans une mare. Finalement il attrape une grenouille, l'apporte à cet
individu et dit:—Maintenant, si vous êtes prêt, mettez-la tout contre Daniel, avec leurs pattes de
devant sur la même ligne, et je donnerai le signal;—puis il ajoute:—Un, deux, trois, sautez!

“Lui et l'individu touchent leurs grenouilles par derrière, et la grenouille neuve se met à sautiller,
mais Daniel se soulève lourdement, hausse les épaules ainsi, comme un Français; à quoi bon? il ne
pouvait bouger, il était planté solide comme une enclume, il n'avançait pas puls que si on l'eût mis
à l'ancre. Smiley fut surpris et dégoûté, mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu. L'individu
empoche l'argent, s'en va, et en s'en allant est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce par-dessus
lé'paule, comme ça, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air délibéré:—Eh bien! je ne vois pas que
cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'une autre.

“Smiley se gratta longtemps la tête, les yeux fixés sur Daniel, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin il dit;—Je me
demande comment diable il se fait que cette bête ait refusé... Est-ce qu'elle aurait quelque chose?..
On croirait qu'elle est enflée.

“Il empoigne Daniel par la peau du cou, le soulève et dit:—Le loup me croque, s'il ne pèse pas
cinq livres.

“Il le retourne, et le malheureux crache deux poignées de plomb. Quand Smiley reconnut ce

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

qui en était, il fut comme fou. Vous le voyez d'ici poser sa grenouille par terre et courir après cet
individu, mais il ne le rattrapa jamais, et...

[Translation of the above back from the French].

THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS.

It there was one time here an individual known under the name of Jim Smiley:
it was in the winter of '49, possibly well at the spring of '50, I no me recollect not
exactly. This which me makes to believe that it was the one or the other, it is that
I shall remember that the grand flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp
for the first time, but of all sides he was the man the most fond of to bet which one
have seen, betting upon all that which is presented, when he could find an adversary;
and when he not of it could not, he passed to the side opposed. All that which
convenienced to the the other, to him convenienced also; seeing that he had a bet,
Smiley was satisfied. And he had a chance! a chance even worthless: nearly
always he gained. It must to say that he was always near to himself expose, but
one no could mention the least thing without that this gaillard offered to bet the
bottom, no matter what, and to take the side that one him would, as I you it said
all at the hour (tout à l'heure). If it there was of races, you him find rich or ruined
at the end; if it there is a combat of dogs, he bring his bet; he himself laid always
for a combat of cats, for a combat of cocks;—by-blue! if you have see two birds
upon a fence, he you should have offered of to bet which of those birds shall fly the
first; and if there is meeting at the camp (meeting au camp) he comes to bet regularly
for the curé Walker, which he judged to be the best predicator of the neighborhood
(prédicateur des environs) and which he was in effect, and a brave man.
He would encounter a bug of wood in the road, whom he will bet upon the time
which he shall take to go where she would go—and if you him have take at the
word, he will follow the bug as far as Mexique, without himself caring to go so far;
neither of the time which he there lost. One time the woman of the curé
Walker is very sick during long time, it seemed that one not her saved not; but
one morning the curé arrives, and Smiley him demanded how she goes, and he said
that she is well better, grace to the infinite misery (lui demande comment elle va,
et il dit qu'elle est bien mieux, grâce à l'infinie misèricorde) so much better that

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

with the benediction of the Providence she herself of it would pull out (elle s'en
tirerait); and behold that without there thinking Smiley responds: “Well, I gage
two-and-half that she will die all of same.”

This Smiley had an animal which the boys called the nag of the quarter of hour,
but solely for pleasantry, you comprehend, because, well understand, she was more
fast as that! [Now why that exclamation?—M. T.] And it was custom of to gain
of the silver with this beast, notwithstanding she was poussive, cornarde, always
taken of asthma, of colics or of consumption, or something of approaching. One
him would give two or three hundred yards at the departure, then one him passed
without pain; but never at the last she not fail of herself èchauffer, of herself
exasperate, and she arrives herself écartant, se dèfendant, her legs grêles in the air
before the obstacles, sometimes them elevating and making with this more of dust
than any horse, more of noise above with his éternumens and reniflemens—crac!
she arrives then always first by one head, as just as one can it measure. And he
had a small bull dog (boule dogue!) who, to him see, no value, not a cent; one
would believe that to bet against him it was to steal, so much he was ordinary; but
as soon as the game made, she becomes another dog. Her jaw inferior commence
to project like a deck of before, his teeth themselves discover brilliant like some
furnaces, and a dog could him tackle (le taquiner), him excite, him murder (le
mordre), him throw two or three times over his shoulder, André Jackson—this was
the name of the dog—André Jackson takes that tranquilly, as if he not himself
was never expecting other thing, and when the bets were doubled and redoubled
against him, he you sieze the other dog just at the articulation of the leg of behind,
and he not it leave more, not that he it masticate, you conceive, but he himself
there shall be holding during until that one throws the sponge in the air, must he
wait a year. Smiley gained always with this beast-là; unhappily they have finished
by elevating a dog who no had not of feet of behind, because one them had sawed;
and when things were at the point that he would, and that he came to himself throw
upon his morsel favorite, the poor dog comprehended in an instant that he himself
was deccived in him, and that the other dog him had. You no have never see
person having the air more penaud and more discouraged; he not made no effort
to gain the combat, and was rudely shucked.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers á rats, and some cocks of combat,
and some cats, and all sort of things; and with his rage of betting one no had more
of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him imported with him (et l'emporta
chez lui) saying that he pretended to make his education. You me believe if you
will, but during three months he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to
jump (apprendre ă sauter) in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And
I you respond that he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and
the instant after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make
one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and re-fall upon his
feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to gobble the flies (gober
des mouches), and him there exercised continually—so well that a fly at the most
far that she appeared was a fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which
lacked to a frog it was the education, but with the education she could do nearly
all—and I him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon
this plank—Daniel Webster was the name of the frog—and to him sing, “Some
flies, Daniel, some flies!”—in a flash of the eye Daniel had bounded and seized a
fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where he rested truly to
himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if he no had not the least idea of
his superiority. Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she
was. And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth,
she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know.
To jump plain—this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that, Smiley
multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him remained a red. It must to
know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he of it was right, for some
men who were traveled, who had all seen, said that they to him would be injurious
to him compare to another frog. Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed
which he carried bytimes to the village for some bet.

One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and him
said:

“What is this that you have then shut up there within?”

Smiley said, with an air indifferent:

“That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is nothing of
such, it not is but a frog.”

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side and from
the other, then he said:

“Tiens! in effect!—At what is she good?”

“My God!” respond Smiley, always with an air disengaged, “she is good for
one thing, to my notice, (à mon avis), she can batter in jumping (elle peut batter
en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.”

The individual re-took the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to
Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:

“Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog.”
(Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille). [If
that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no judge.—M. T.]

“Possible that you not it saw not,” said Smiley, “possible that you—you comprehend
frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing; possible that
you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but an amateur. Of all
manner, (De toute manière) I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping no matter
which frog of the county of Calaveras.”

The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:

“I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had one, I
would embrace the bet.”

“Strong well!” respond Smiley; “nothing of more facility. If you will hold my
box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j' irai vous chercher).”

Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box, who puts his forty dollars upon
those of Smiley, and who attends, (et qui attend). He attended enough longtimes,
reflecting all solely. And figure you that he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by
force and with a tea-spoon him fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the
chin, then he him puts by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in
a swamp. Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
said:

“Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet upon the
same line, and I give the signal”—then he added: “One, two, three,—advance!”

Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new put to
jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the shoulders thus,

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

like a Frenchman—to what good? he not could budge, he is planted solid like a
church, he not advance no more than if one him had put at the anchor.

Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the turn
being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu). The individual
empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it himself in going is it that he
no gives not a jerk of thumb over the shoulder—like that—at the poor Daniel, in
saying with his air deliberate—(L' individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en
allant est ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce par-dessus l'épaule, comme ca,
au pauvre Daniel, endisant de son air délibéré):

“Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than another.”

Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel, until
that which at last he said:

“I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused. Is it
that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.”

He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:

“The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds.”

He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le malhereus,
etc).—When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad. He deposited
his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he not him caught never.

Such is the Jumping Frog, to the distorted French eye. I claim that I never put
together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium tremens in my life.
And what has a poor foreigner like me done, to be abused and misrepresented like
this? When I say, “Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n
any other frog,” is it kind, is it just, for this Frenchman to try to make it appear
that I said, “Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog?” I have no heart to write more. I never felt so about anything before.

Hartford, March, 1875.

p503-043 JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 044. In-line image; the opening image for the short story "Journalism in Tennessee." Twain is sitting at a desk writing, with the editor-in-chief standing at his shoulder. Both are looking up at the door to the office, which has been thrown open by a tall man dressed in the regalia of an officer in the Civil War. His eyes are wild, as is his hair that stands on end. The officer has one hand on his hip and the other is clasped onto a gun. In the foreground of the image are newspapers spread unevenly on the floor.[end figure description]

I WAS told by the physician that a
Southern climate would improve my
health, and so I went down to Tennessee,
and got a berth on the Morning Glory
and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate
editor. When I went on duty I
found the chief editor sitting tilted back
in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine
table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of
sand, sprinkled with cigar stubs and “old soldiers,” and a stove with a door hanging
by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock coat
on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a
ruffled shirt, a large seal ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered
neckerchief with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He
was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had
rumpled his locks a good deal: He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he
was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges
and skim through them and write up the “Spirit of the Tennessee Press,” condensing
into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.

I wrote as follows:—

“SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS.

“The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a misapprehension with
regard to the Ballyhack railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off
to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and
consequently can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take
pleasure in making the correction.

“John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom,
arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.

“We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has fallen into the error
of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered
his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete
election returns.

“It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract with some New York
gentlemen to pave its well-nigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah
urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate success.”

I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or
destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He ran his eye down the
pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was easy to see that something
was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said—

“Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those cattle
that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that?
Give me the pen!”

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plough through
another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of
his work, somebody shot at him through the open window, and marred the symmetry
of my ear.

“Ah,” said he, “that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano—he was due
yesterday.” And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired. Smith
dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a
second chance, and he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off.

Then the chief editor went on with his erasures and interlineations. Just as he
finished them a hand-grenade came down the stove pipe, and the explosion shivered
the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except
that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out.

“That stove is utterly ruined,” said the chief editor.

I said I believed it was.

“Well, no matter—don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did
it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written.”

I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations till its
mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as follows:—

“SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS.

“The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavoring to palm off
upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard
to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. The
idea that Buzzardville was to be left oft at one side originated in their own fulsome brains—or
rather in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this lie if they want
to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve.

“That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, is down here
again sponging at the Van Buren.

“We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Spring Morning Howl is giving out, with
his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism
is to disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public
morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways
better, and holier, and happier; and yet this black-hearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently
to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.

“Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement—it wants a jail and a poorhouse more. The idea
of a pavement in a one horse town composed of two gin mills, a blacksmith's shop, and that

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

mustardplaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah, is
braying about this business with his customary imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense.”

“Now that is the way to write—peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism
gives me the fan-tods.”

About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash, and
gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range—I began to
feel in the way.

The chief said, “That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him for two
days. He will be up, now, right away.”

He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with a
dragoon revolver in his hand.

He said, “Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this mangy
sheet?”

“You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is gone. I
believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Col. Blatherskite Tecumseh?”

“Right, sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure we
will begin.”

“I have an article on the `Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual
Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin.”

Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief lost a
lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the fleshy part of my
thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both
missed their men this time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third
fire both gentleman were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then
said, I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and
I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me
to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.

They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded, and I
fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again with animation,
and every shot took effect—but it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to
my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine
humor, that he would have to say good morning now, as he had business up town.
He then inquired the way to the undertaker's and left.

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

The chief turned to me and said, “I am expecting company to dinner, and shall
have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof and attend to
the customers.”

I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was too bewildered
by the fusilade that was still ringing in my ears to think of anything to say.

He continued, “Jones will be here at 3—cowhide him. Gillespie will call
earlier, perhaps—throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be along about 4—
kill him. That is all for to-day, I believe. If you have any odd time, you may
write a blistering article on the police—give the Chief Inspector rats. The cowhides
are under the table; weapons in the drawer—ammunition there in the corner—
lint and bandages up there in the pigeon-holes. In case of accident, go to Lancet,
the surgeon, down-stairs. He advertises—we take it out in trade.”

He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been
through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were gone from
me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window. Jones arrived
promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands.
In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill of fare, I had lost my scalp.
Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, left me a mere wreck and ruin of
chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of
editors, blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished
their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel,
I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief arrived, and
with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of
riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one either, could describe. People
were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was
a brief tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering
through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there was silence, and
the gory chief and I sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the
floor around us.

He said, “You'll like this place when you get used to it.”

I said, “I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write to suit
you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned the language
I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that sort of energy of

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 049. Image of violence as Twain, who occupies the center of the image, draws back his hand, which tightly holds a giant knife, to slay a man whose body is bent backwards over Twain's knee. In the foreground are an assortment of weapons spread on the ground and in the background are shadowy images of violence being committed by various men.[end figure description]

expression has its inconveniences, and a man is liable to interruption. You see
that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt, but,
then I do not like to attract so much attention as it calls forth. I can't write with
comfort when I am interrupted so much as I have been to-day. I like this berth
well enough, but I don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The
experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining too, after a fashion, but they
are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window
and cripples me; a bomb-shell comes down the stove-pipe for your gratification
and sends the stove-door down my throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments
with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won't hold my principles;
you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 050. In-line image of Twain in the accident ward of the hospital. He is lying sleeping in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped around his head, eyes blackened from fighting, with a pained expression on his face.[end figure description]

the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my
scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes
all the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare
the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had
such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day. No; I like you, and I like
your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the customers, but you see I am
not used to it. The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too
lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into
whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennessean
journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors
will come—and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast. I
shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at these festivities. I came
South for my health, I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennesseean
journalism is too stirring for me.”

After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital.

p503-050 STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 051. In-line image; opening image for the "Story of the Bad Little Boy." The image is taken up by a giant apple tree in which a boy sits cross-legged on a long branch, leaning backwards to reach for a piece of fruit. At the foot of the tree stands a dog, resembling a bull-mastiff, watching over both the boy and a hat filled with apples.[end figure description]

ONCE there was a bad little boy
whose name was Jim—though,
if you will notice, you will find
that bad little boys are nearly always
called James in your Sunday-school
books. It was strange, but still it
was true that this one was called Jim.

He didn't have any sick mother
either—a sick mother who was pious
and had the consumption, and would
be glad to lie down in the grave and
be at rest but for the strong love she
bore her boy, and the anxiety she
felt that the world might be harsh and cold towards him when she was gone.
Most bad boys in the Sunday-books are named James, and have sick mothers,

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 052. Image of the bad little boy standing on a chair in the pantry, taking down a large jar of jam to eat.[end figure description]

who teach them to say, “Now, I lay me down,” etc., and sing them to sleep
with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good-night, and kneel down by
the bedside and weep. But it was different with this fellow. He was named
Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother—no consumption,
nor anything of that kind. She was rather stout than otherwise, and she was
not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's account. She said if he were
to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss. She always spanked Jim to sleep,
and she never kissed him good-night; on the contrary, she boxed his ears when
she was ready to leave him.

Once this little bad boy stole the
key of the pantry, and slipped in
there and helped himself to some
jam, and filled up the vessel with tar,
so that his mother would never know
the difference; but all at once a terrible
feeling didn't come over him,
and something didn't seem to
whisper to him, “Is it right to disobey
my mother? Isn't it sinful to do
this? Where do bad little boys go
who gobble up their good kind
mother's jam?” and then he didn't
kneel down all alone and promise
never to be wicked any more, and rise
up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell his mother all about it, and beg
her forgiveness, and be blessed by her with tears of pride and thankfulness in
her eyes. No; that is the way with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened
otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough. He ate that jam, and said it was
bully, in his sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully
also, and laughed, and observed “that the old woman would get up and snort”
when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing anything
about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying himself.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 054. Image of the bad little boy at the circus, holding onto the trunk of an elephant into which he has shoved a plug of tobacco. The elephant is standing to the left and calmly watching the boy as onlookers observe from the foreground.[end figure description]

Everything about this boy was curious—everything turned out differently with
him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the books.

Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple-tree to steal apples, and the
limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by the
farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sick bed for weeks, and repent and
become good. Oh! no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and came down
all right; and he was all ready for the dog too, and knocked him endways with
a brick when he came to tear him. It was very strange—nothing like it ever
happened in those mild little books with marbled backs, and with pictures in
them of men with swallow-tailed coats and bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons
that are short in the legs, and women with the waists of their dresses under their
arms, and no hoops on. Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books.

Once he stole the teacher's pen-knife, and, when he was afraid it would be
found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's cap—
poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the village, who
always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was fond of his lessons,
and infatuated with Sunday-school. And when the knife dropped from
the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed, as if in conscious guilt,
and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon him, and was just in the very
act of bringing the switch down upon his trembling shoulders, a white-haired,
improbable justice of the peace did not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike
an attitude and say, “Spare this noble boy—there stands the cowering culprit!
I was passing the school-door at recess, and unseen myself, I saw the theft committed!”
And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice didn't
read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and say such a boy
deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his home with him,
and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands, and chop wood, and
study law, and help his wife do household labors, and have all the balance of
the time to play, and get forty cents a month, and be happy. No; it would
have happened that way in the books, but it didn't happen that way to Jim.
No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to make trouble, and so the model
boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad of it because, you know, Jim hated

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 055. Image of the bad little boy grown up and standing next to a bar drinking. He is wearing a sailor outfit, which includes a jaunty hat adorned with ribbon.[end figure description]

moral boys. Jim said he was “down on them milksops.” Such was the
coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.

But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went boating
on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he got caught
out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn't get struck by lightning.
Why, you might look, and look, all through the Sunday-school books
from now till next Christmas, and you would never come across anything like
this. Oh no; you would find that all the bad boys who go boating on Sunday
invariably get drowned; and all
the bad boys who get caught out in
storms when they are fishing on Sunday
infallibly get struck by lightning.
Boats with bad boys in them
always upset on Sunday, and it always
storms when bad boys go fishing
on the Sabbath. How this
Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.

This Jim bore a charmed life—that
must have been the way of it.
Nothing could hurt him. He even
gave the elephant in the menagerie
a plug of tobacco, and the elephant
didn't knock the top of his head off
with his trunk. He browsed
around the cupboard after essence of peppermint, and didn't make a mistake and
drink aqua fortis. He stole his father's gun and went hunting on the Sabbath,
and didn't shoot three or four of his fingers off. He struck his little sister on
the temple with his fist when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through
long summer days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that
redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart. No; she got over it. He ran off
and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself sad and alone in
the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet churchyard, and the

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and gone to decay. Ah! no; he came
home as drunk as a piper, and got into the station-house the first thing.

And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them all
with an axe one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and raseality;
and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his native village, and is
universally respected, and belongs to the Legislature.

So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that had
such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.

p503-055 THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 056. In-line image; opening image for "The Story of the Good Little Boy." The image centers around a body of water and a pier. In the foreground of the image, a small boy is floating in the water, trying to stay afloat by holding onto a log. A man watches from a nearby pier, while in the background boats sail the waters.[end figure description]

ONCE there was a good little
boy by the name of Jacob
Blivens. He always obeyed
his parents, no matter how absurd
and unreasonable their demands
were; and he always learned his
book, and never was late at Sabbath-school.
He would not play hookey,
even when his sober judgment told
him it was the most profitable thing
he could do. None of the other
boys could ever make that boy out,
he acted so strangely. He wouldn't
lie, no matter how convenient it was. He just said it was wrong to lie, and
that was sufficient for him. And he was so honest that he was simply

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

ridiculous. The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything. He
wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he wouldn't give
hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to take any interest in
any kind of rational amusement. So the other boys used to try to reason it out
and come to an understanding of him, but they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory
conclusion. As I said before, they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that
he was “afflicted,” and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed
any harm to come to him.

This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his greatest
delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the good little boys
they put in the Sunday-school books; he had every confidence in them. He
longed to come across one of them alive, once; but he never did. They all died
before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one he
turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him, because he wanted to
travel thousands of miles and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good
little boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral,
with all his relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave
in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and everybody
crying into handkerchief's that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them.
He was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good
little boys on account of his always dying in the last chapter.

Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday-school book. He wanted
to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie to his
mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures representing him standing
on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor beggar-woman with six children, and
telling her to spend it freely, but not to be extravagant, because extravagance is
a sin; and pictures of him magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who
always lay in wait for him around the corner as he came from school, and welted
him over the head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, “Hi! hi!” as
he proceeded. That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens. He wished to
be put in a Sunday-school book. It made him feel a little uncomfortable sometimes
when he reflected that the good little boys always died. He loved to live,

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 058. Image of the good little boy being whacked over the head with a cane by a blind man. The blind man is quite tall, wearing a black stove-pipe hat, and has a monkey on a leash. In the background the bad boys who pushed the blind man down watch and laugh at the good boy's plight.[end figure description]

you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about being a Sunday-school-book
boy. He knew it was not healthy to be good. He knew it was more fatal
than consumption to be so supernaturally good as the boys in the books were;
he knew that none of them had ever been able to stand it long, and it pained him to
think that if they put him in a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did
get the book out before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of
his funeral in the back part of it. It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book
that couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was dying.
So at last, of course, he had to
make up his mind to do the best he
could under the circumstances—to
live right, and hang on as long as
he could, and have his dying speech
all ready when his time came.

But somehow nothing ever went
right with this good little boy;
nothing ever turned out with
him the way it turned out with
the good little boys in the books.
They always had a good time, and
the bad boys had the broken legs;
but in his case there was a screw
loose somewhere, and it all happened
just the other way. When
he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him
about the bad little boy who fell out of a neighbor's apple-tree and broke his
arm, Jim fell out of the tree too, but he fell on him, and broke his arm, and Jim
wasn't hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in
the books like it.

And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and
Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not give
him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his stick and said

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then pretending to help him
up. This was not in accordance with any of the books. Jacob looked them all
over to see.

One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any
place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet him
and have that dog's imperishable gratitude. And at last he found one and was
happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going to pet
him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except those that were
in front, and made a spectacle of him that was astonishing. He examined
authorities, but he could not understand the matter. It was of the same breed
of dogs that was in the books, but it acted very differently. Whatever this boy
did he got into trouble. The very things the boys in the books got rewarded
for turned out to be about the most unprofitable things he could invest in.

Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys
starting off pleasuring in a sail-boat. He was filled with consternation, because
he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday invariably got
drowned. So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log turned with him and
slid him into the river. A man got him out pretty soon, and the doctor pumped
the water out of him, and gave him a fresh start with his bellows, but he caught
cold and lay sick a-bed nine weeks. But the most unaccountable thing about it
was that the bad boys in the boat had a good time all day, and then reached
home alive and well in the most surprising manner. Jacob Blivens said there
was nothing like these things in the books. He was perfectly dumbfounded.

When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on
trying anyhow. He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in a
book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good little boys, and
he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could hold on till his time was
fully up. If everything else failed he had his dying speech to fall back on.

He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go to
sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship captain and made his application, and
when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract
and pointed to the words, “To Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher.” But

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 060. Image of the good little boy talking to a boat captain. The good little boy is gaunt and sad looking.[end figure description]

the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and he said, “Oh, that be blowed! that
wasn't any proof that he knew how to wash dishes or handle a slush-backet, and
he guessed he didn't want him.” This was altogether the most extraordinary
thing that ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher,
on a tract, had never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship captains, and
open the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift—it never had in any
book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses.

This boy always had a hard time of it. Nothing ever came out according to
the authorities with him. At last,
one day, when he was around hunting
up bad little boys to admonish,
he found a lot of them in the old
iron foundry fixing up a little
joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs,
which they had tied together in
long procession, and were going
to ornament with empty nitro-glycerine
cans made fast to their tails.
Jacob's heart was touched. He sat
down on one of those cans (for he
never minded grease when duty
was before him), and he took hold
of the foremost dog by the collar,
and turned his reproving eye
upon wicked Tom Jones. But just
at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in. All the bad
boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began one of
those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always commence with
“Oh, sir!” in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good or bad, ever starts
a remark with “Oh, sir.” But the alderman never waited to hear the rest. He
took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him around, and hit him a whack in
the rear with the flat of his hand; and in an instant that good little boy shot out

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

through the roof and soared away towards the sun, with the fragments of those
fifteen dogs stringing after him like the tail of a kite. And there wasn't a
sign of that alderman or that old iron foundry left on the face of the earth; and,
as for young Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech
after all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because, although
the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an adjoining county, the
rest of him was apportioned around among four townships, and so they had to
hold five inquests on him to find out whether he was dead or not, and how it
occurred. You never saw a boy scattered so.*

Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't come
out according to the books. Every boy who ever did as he did prospered except
him. His case is truly remarkable. It will probably never be accounted for.

p503-061 A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

THOSE EVENING BELLS.

BY THOMAS MOORE.

THOSE ANNUAL BILLS.

BY MARK TWAIN.

p503-062 NIAGARA.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 063. In-line image; opening image for the story "Niagara." Twain is sitting on a cliff edge, next to the rushing waters of Niagara Falls, smoking a pipe and holding a fishing pole.[end figure description]

NIAGARA FALLS is a most enjoyable
place of resort. The hotels
are excellent, and the prices not
at all exorbitant. The opportunities for
fishing are not surpassed in the country;
in fact, they are not even equalled elsewhere.
Because, in other localities,
certain places in the streams are much
better than others; but at Niagara one
place is just as good as another, for the
reason that the fish do not bite anywhere,
and so there is no use in your walking
five miles to fish, when you can depend
on being just as unsuccessful nearer
home. The advantages of this state of
things have never heretofore been properly placed before the public.

The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant and

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

none of them fatiguing. When you start out to “do” the Falls you first drive down
about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down from a precipice
into the narrowest part of the Niagara river. A railway “cut” through a hill
would be as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and foaming through its
bottom. You can descend a staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and
stand at the edge of the water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you
did it; but you will then be too late.

The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the little
steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids—how first one paddle-box
was out of sight behind the raging billows, and then the other, and at what point it
was that her smokestack toppled overboard, and where her planking began to break
and part asunder—and how she did finally live through the trip, after accomplishing
the incredible feat of travelling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in
seventeen minutes, I have really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary,
anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine
times in succession to different parties, and never miss a word or alter a sentence
or a gesture.

Then you drive over the Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between the
chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances
of having the railway train overhead smashing down on to you. Either possibility
is discomforting taken by itself, but mixed together, they amount in the aggregate
to positive unhappiness.

On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of photographers
standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an ostentatious frontispiece
of you and your decaying ambulance, and your solemn crate with a hide on
it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a horse, and a diminished and
unimportant background of sublime Niagara; and a great many people have the
incredible effrontery or the native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime.

Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of
papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of country cousins, all
smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their
carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 065. Image of many photographers gathered around one of the falls at Niagara.[end figure description]

and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits
are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds,
who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful of small reptiles
was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads,
and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered
themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with
the unremembering dust.

There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display
one's marvellous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of
superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.

When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are satisfied
you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new Suspension Bridge,
and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave of the Winds.

Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and put
on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque, but not beautiful.
A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding stairs, which
wound and wound, and still kept on winding long after the thing ceased to be a

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 066. In-line image of Twain climbing down a long ramp in the pouring rain. He is clinging to the railing and trying not to slip. A figure is disappearing into the rain in the background.[end figure description]

novelty, and then terminated long before it
had begun to be a pleasure. We were then
well down under the precipice, but still considerably
above the level of the river.

We now began to creep along flimsy bridges
of a single plank, our persons shielded from
destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which
I clung with both hands—not because I was
afraid, but because I wanted to. Presently the
descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier,
and sprays from the American Fall began to
rain down on us in fast-increasing sheets that
soon became blinding, and after that our progress
was mostly in the nature of groping.
Now a furious wind began to rush out from
behind the waterfall, which seemed determined
to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter us on
the rocks and among the torrents below. I
remarked that I wanted to go home; but it was
too late. We were almost under the monstrous
wall of water thundering down from above, and
speech was in vain in the midst of such a
pitiless crash of sound.

In another moment the guide disappeared
behind the deluge, and bewildered by the
thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and
smitten by the arrowy tempest of rain, I followed.
All was darkness. Such a mad storming,
roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and
water never crazed my ears before. I bent my
head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on
my back. The world seemed going to destruction. I could not see anything, the

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

flood poured down so savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most
of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now, I
had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and
we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so
scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the
open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world
of descending water, and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and
how fearfully in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it.

The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love to
read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of his inspired
sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and forest, and his general
nobility of character, and his stately metaphorical manner of speech, and his
chivalrous love for the dusky maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and
accoutrements. Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements.
When I found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian bead-work, and
stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human beings who
carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and bodies, and had feet
shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion. I knew that now, at last, I was going
to come face to face with the noble Red Man.

A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of curiosities
were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the Falls, and that they
were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to speak to them. And sure enough,
as I approached the bridge leading over to Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son
of the Forest sitting under a tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore
a slouch hat and brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does
the baneful contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp
which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native haunts.
I addressed the relic as follows:—

“Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy? Does the great
Speckled Thunder sigh for the war path, or is his heart contented with dreaming
of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest? Does the mighty Sachem yearn to
drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to make bead reticules for the

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 068. In-line image of Twain standing in the grass next to a seated man, who is leaning against a giant, leafy tree. The man has one hand wrapped around a cane and the other through the handle of a large basket. He is smoking a pipe and eyeing Twain with distrust.[end figure description]

pappooses of the paleface? Speak, sublime relic of bygone grandeur—venerable
ruin, speak!”

The relic said—

“An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirty Injin, ye
drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil! By the piper that played before
Moses, I'll ate ye!”

I went away from there.

By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a gentle
daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin moccasins and leggins,
seated on a bench, with her pretty wares about her. She had just carved out a
wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a clothes-pin, and was now

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 069. In-line image of Twain bowing towards a woman who is seated on a bench carving figures out of wood. The woman is listening to Twain with a smile on her face. In the background are fields and a large windmill.[end figure description]

boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment,
and then addressed her:

“Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the Laughing Tadpole lonely?
Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race, and the vanished
glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wander afar toward the huntinggrounds
whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-Lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter
silent? Has she aught against the
paleface stranger?”

The maiden said—

“Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye
dare to be callin' names? Lave this,
or I'll shy your lean carcass over
the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!”

I adjourned from there also.

“Confound these Indians!” I said.
“They told me they were tame; but,
if appearances go for anything, I
should say they were all on the war
path.”

I made one more attempt to fraternize
with them, and only one. I
came upon a camp of them gathered
in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins, and addressed them
in the language of friendship:

“Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High Muck-a-Mucks,
the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! You, Beneficent
Polecat—you, Devourer of Mountains—you, Roaring Thundergust—you, Bully Boy
with a Glass eye—the paleface from beyond the great waters greets you all! War
and pestilence have thinned your ranks, and destroyed your once proud nation.
Poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious
ancestors, have depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property
of others, has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your simple

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for
forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families,
has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and
here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag
and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors!
Recall their mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!—and Red Jacket!—and Hole in
the Day!—and Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves
under my banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes”—

“Down wid him!” “Scoop the blaggard!” “Burn him!” “Hang him!”
“Dhround him!”

It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash in the
air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins—a single flash, and they
all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. In the next
instant the entire tribe was upon me. They tore half the clothes off me; they
broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head
till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings
and add insult to injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.

About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest caught on
a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get loose. I finally
fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the Fall, whose celled
and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. Of course I got
into the eddy. I sailed round and round in it forty-four times—chasing a chip
and gaining on it—each round trip a half mile—reaching for the same bush on the
bank forty-four times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.

At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe in
his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other on
the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. Presently a puff of
wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he said—

“Got a match?”

“Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please.”

“Not for Joe.”

When I came round again, I said—

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 071. In-line image of Twain floating down the river, trying to keep his head above water. He is trying to reach the shore with his hand. On the bank of the river sits the coroner, calmly smoking his pipe and watching Twain struggle.[end figure description]

“Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will you
explain this singular conduct of yours?”

“With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can wait
for you. But I wish I had a match.”

I said—“Take my place, and I'll go and get you one.”

He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between
us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea, in case anything
happened to me, to so time the occurrence
as to throw my custom into the
hands of the opposition coroner over
on the American side.

At last a policeman came along,
and arrested me for disturbing the
peace by yelling at people on shore for
help. The judge fined me, but I had
the advantage of him. My money
was with my pantaloons, and my
pantaloons were with the Indians.

Thus I escaped. I am now lying in
a very critical condition. At least I
am lying anyway — critical or not
critical. I am hurt all over, but I cannot
tell the full extent yet, because
the doctor is not done taking inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening.
However, thus far he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't
mind the others.

Upon regaining my right mind, I said—

“It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the bead work and moccasins for
Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?”

“Limerick, my son.”

p503-071 Answers to Correspondents.

[figure description] 503EAF. Page 072. Opening page for a section called "Answers to Correspondents." The page is framed by small portraits of characters.[end figure description]

“Moral Statistician.”—I don't want any of your statistics;
I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate
your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much
a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired,
and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in
the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice
of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking
a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. etc. And you are always
figuring out how many women have been burned to death
because of the dangerous fashion of wearing expansive hoops,
etc. etc. etc. You never see more than one side of the
question. You are blind to the fact that most old men in
America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your
theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old
Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen
both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and
fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much
solid comfort relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from
smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times
the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling
aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of
people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself
all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul.
All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this
life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use
of accumulating cash? It won't do for you to say that you can use it to
better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting
tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty
vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves
so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you
never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you
in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are
always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in the cushion, when the contribution-box
comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a full statement
of your income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very
well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and
withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless
to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be
always trying to seduce people into becoming as “ornery” and unloveable as you
are yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics?” Now, I don't approve of
dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but I haven't a particle of confidence
in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so I don't want to hear from
you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture
last week about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my
absence, with your reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful
parlor stove.

“Young Author.”—Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because
the phosphorus in it makes brains. So far you are correct. But I cannot help you
to a decision about the amount you need to eat—at least, not with certainty. If
the specimen composition you send is about your fair usual average, I should judge
that perhaps a couple of whales would be all you would want for the present. Not
the largest kind, but simply good, middling-sized whales.

“Simon Wheeler,” Sonora.—The following simple and touching remarks and

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region of
Sonora:—

To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry under the name and style
of “He Done His Level Best,” was one among the whitest men I ever see, and it an't every man
that knowed him that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is busted and gone
home to the States. He was here in an early day, and he was the handyest man about takin' holt
of anything that come along you most ever see, I judge. He was a cheerful, stirrin' cretur,
always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him do anything by halvers. Preachin'
was his nateral gait, but he warn't a man to lay back and twidle his thumbs because there didn't
happen to be nothin' doin' in his own especial line—no, sir, he was a man who would meander
forth and stir up something for hisself. His last acts was to go his pile on “kings-and” (calklatin'
to fill, but which he didn't fill), when there was a “flush” out agin him, and naterally, you see, he
went under. And so he was cleaned out, as you may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful
but flat broke. I knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this humbly
tribute to his gorgis abilities, you would greatly obleege his onhappy friend.

HE DONE HIS LEVEL BEST.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

Verily, this man was gifted with “gorgis abilities,” and it is a happiness to me to
embalm the memory of their lustre in these columns. If it were not that the poet
crop is unusually large and rank in California this year, I would encourage you to
continue writing, Simon Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you
to enter against so much opposition.

“Professional Beggar.” No; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at par.

“Melton Mowbray,”* Dutch Flat.—This correspondent sends a lot of doggerel,
and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat. I give a specimen
verse:—

There, that will do. That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it won't do
in the metropolis. It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like buttermilk gurgling
from a jug. What the people ought to have is something spirited—something like
“Johnny Comes Marching Home.” However, keep on practising, and you may
succeed yet. There is genius in you, but too much blubber.

“St. Clair Higgins.” Los Angeles.—“My life is a failure; I have adored, wildly, madly, and

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

she whom I love has turned coldly from me and shed her affections upon another. What would
you advise me to do?”

You should set your affections on another, also—or on several, if there are
enough to go round. Also, do everything you can to make your former flame
unhappy. There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the happier a girl
is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover she has blighted. Don't
allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as that. The more cause that girl
finds to regret that she did not marry you, the more comfortable you will feel over
it. It isn't poetical, but it is mighty sound doctrine.

“Arithmeticus.” Virginia, Nevada.—“If it would take a cannon ball 3 1-3 seconds to travel
four miles, and 3 3-8 seconds to travel the next four, and 3 5-8 to travel the next four, and if its
rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how long would it take it to go fifteen
hundred millions of miles?

I don't know.

“Ambitious Learner,” Oakland.—Yes; you are right—America was not discovered
by Alexander Selkirk.

“Discarded Lover.”—I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha Howard, and intended to
marry her. Yet, during my temporary absence at Benicia, last week, alas! she married Jones. Is
my happiness to be thus blasted for life? Have I no redress?”

Of course you have. All the law, written and unwritten, is on you side. The
intention and not the act constitutes crime—in other words, constitutes the deed.
If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend it for an insult, it is an insult; but
if you do it playfully, and meaning no insult, it is not an insult. If you discharge
a pistol accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no murder;
but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him, but fail utterly to do
it, the law still holds that the intention constituted the crime, and you are guilty of
murder. Ergo, if you had married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending
to do it, you would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of
marriage could not be complete without the intention. And ergo, in the strict spirit
of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and didn't do it, you

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are married to her all the same—because, as I said before, the intention constitutes
the crime. It is as clear as day that Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in
taking a club and mutilating Jones with it as much as you can. Any man has a
right to protect his own wife from the advances of other men. But you have
another alternative—you were married to Edwitha first, because of your deliberate
intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in subsequently marrying
Jones. But there is another phase in this complicated case: You intended to marry
Edwitha, and consequently, according to law, she is your wife—there is no getting
around that; but she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you
are not her husband, of course. Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of bigamy,
because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all very well as far
as it goes—but then, don't you see, she had no other husband when she married
Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of bigamy. Now, according to this
view of the case, Jones married a spinster, who was a widow at the same time and
another man's wife at the same time, and yet who had no husband and never had
one, and never had any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never
had been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you have
never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a wife living;
and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have been deprived of that
wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia in the first place, while things
were so mixed. And by this time I have got myself so tangled up in the intricacies
of this extraordinary case that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise
you—I might get confused and fail to make myself understood. I think I could
take up the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile, perhaps I
could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed at all, or that you
are dead now, and consequently don't need the faithless Edwitha—I think I could
do that, if it would afford you any comfort.

“Arthur Augustus.”—No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a
brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you will hurt
somebody if you keep it up. Turn your nosegay upside down, take it by the stems,
and toss it with an upward sweep. Did you ever pitch quoits? that is the idea.
The practice of recklessly heaving immense solid bouquets, of the general size and

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weight of prize cabbages, from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and
very reprehensible. Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just after
Signorina — had finished that exquisite melody, “The Last Rose of Summer,”
one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the atmosphere of
applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right, it would have driven
her into the floor like a shingle-nail. Of course that bouquet was well meant; but
how would you like to have been the target? A sincere compliment is always
grateful to a lady, so long as you don't try to knock her down with it.

“Young Mother.”—And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy
forever? Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks the same
of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly, but still she thinks
it nevertheless. I honor the cow for it. We all honor this touching maternal
instinct wherever we find it, be it in the home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed.
But really, madam, when I come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find
that the correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases. A soiled
baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded as a thing of
beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short years, no baby is competent
to be a joy “forever.” It pains me thus to demolish two-thirds of your pretty
sentiment in a single sentence; but the position I hold in this chair requires that I
shall not permit you to deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures
of speech. I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot
hold out as a “joy” twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone “forever.” And it
possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character and appetite that
have ever fallen under my notice. I will set down here a statement of this infant's
operations (conceived, planned, and carried out by itself, and without suggestion
or assistance from its mother or any one else), during a single day; and what I
shall say can be substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses.

It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then it
fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on its forehead,
after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment and amusement. It found
a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work—smashed up and ate the glass, and
then swallowed the brass. Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and

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more than a dozen tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor. The reason why it
took no more laudanum was because there was no more to take. After this it lay
down on its back, and shoved five or six inches of a silver-headed whale-bone cane
down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its mother could do to pull the cane
out again, without pulling out some of the child with it. Then, being hungry for
glass again, it broke up several wine-glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the
fragments, not minding a cut or two. Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper,
salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a spoonful of salt,
a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches at each mouthful. (I will
remark here that this thing of beauty likes painted German lucifers, and eats all
she can get of them; but she prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment
to our home manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does,
from one who is too young to flatter.) Then she washed her head with soap and
water, and afterwards ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the suds as she
had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow familiarly by the tail,
and got kicked heels over head. At odd times during the day, when this joy for
ever happened to have nothing particular on hand, she put in the time by climbing
up on places, and falling down off them, uniformly damaging herself in the operation.
As young as she is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being
plain-spoken in other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with
all strangers, male or female, with the same formula, “How do, Jim?” Not being
familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have been magnifying into
matter of surprise things which may not strike any one who is familiar with infancy
as being at all astonishing. However, I cannot believe that such is the case, and
so I repeat that my report of this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any
one doubts it, I can produce the child. I will further engage that she will devour
anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude anvils),
and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated (merely stipulating
that her preference for alighting on her head shall be respected, and, therefore,
that the elevation chosen shall be high enough to enable her to accomplish this to
her satisfaction.) But I find I have wandered from my subject; so, without further
argument, I will reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty
and joys forever.

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“Arithmeticus.” Virginia, Nevada.—“I am an enthusiastic student of mathematics, and it is
so vexatious to me to find my progress constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalitics.
Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and conchology?”

Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am suffering
death with a cold in the head. If you could have seen the expression of scorn that
darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was instantly split from the centre
in every direction like a fractured looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would
have written that disgraceful question. Conchology is a science which has nothing
to do with mathematics: it relates only to shells. At the same time, however, a
man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks eggs, is not,
strictly speaking, a conchologist—a fine stroke of sarcasm that, but it will be lost
on such an unintellectual clam as you. Now compare conchology and geometry
together, and you will see what the difference is, and your question will be answered.
But don't torture me with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid
of my cold. I feel the bitterest animosity towards you at this moment—bothering
me in this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort pocket-handkerchiefs
to atoms. If I had you in range of my nose, now, I would blow
your brains out.