The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain, his first great success as a writer, bringing him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley. Twain describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he is bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he 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."

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is also the title story of an 1867 collection of short stories by Mark Twain. Twain's first book, it collected 27 stories that were previously published in magazines and newspapers.

Read more about The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County:  Publication History, Plot, Translations, Adaptations, The Short-story Collection

Famous quotes containing the words celebrated, jumping, frog and/or county:

    Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Herod-like slaughter of the innocents.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.
    Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)

    What a wonderful bird the frog are—
    When he stand he sit almost;
    When he hop, he fly almost.
    He ain’t got no sense hardly;
    He ain’t got no tail hardly either.
    When he sit, he sit on what he ain’t got almost.
    —Unknown. The Frog (l. 1–6)

    It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens of your County who twelve years ago knew me a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month to learn that I have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)