"'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.'

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 the 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

Sketches New and Old