retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the

grammar. I think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the French are

called a polished nation. If I had a boy that put sentences together as

they do, I would polish him to some purpose. Without further

introduction, the Jumping Frog, as I originally wrote it, was as follows

[after it will be found the French version, and after the latter my

retranslation from the French]

THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY [Pronounced Cal-e-

va-ras]

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the

East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired

after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I

hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W.

Smiley is a myth that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he

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

Sketches New and Old