The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Complete textAsked to inquire about an acquaintance, a visitor finds himself listening to Simon Wheeler's lengthy account of an inveterate gambler. Among the gambler's unlikely sporting interests is a trained frog, whose abilities become the subject of another stranger's challenge.
Continue readingAbout The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Twain's humor depends on the contrast between the listener's impatience and Wheeler's unhurried seriousness. The layered narration makes the act of telling as important as the wager itself. Listen for the rhythm of apparent digressions and for the way elaborate preparation gives trivial events the weight of local history.
Reading focus
Enjoy a compact tall tale whose deadpan voice and patient digressions turn an improbable wager into a performance of storytelling.
This reading edition contains 2,566 words in 1 original section. Read the text online with adjustable type and three colour themes, or keep a printable PDF.
Author: Mark Twain. Language: English. Reading edition: 28 October 2026.
Opening excerpt
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.
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