The Celebrated Jumping Frog by Mark Twain
Did you know Mark Twain found his voice not in the South, but right here in Angels Camp, Calaveras County, California? Ready to become a part of the living legend? Read this three part series on The Celebrated Jumping Frog by Mark Twain to explore the little known tale of how Mark Twain, the brilliant American humorist and storyteller, found his voice not in the South, but right here in Angels Camp, CA, with his first successful work of fiction, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and how you can become a part of the next chapter of Mark Twain’s adventurous legacy today.
Behind Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
How the story helped Mark Twain find his voice.
In 1865, Mark Twain (then still known as Samuel Clemens) was a no-name, down-on-his-luck 29 year old, fleeing the Civil War raging in the South, deeply in debt, going from newspaper job to newspaper job, with no clue what he wanted to do with his life–something quite uncommon for a man of his age in that era.
After getting fired from what is now known as the San Francisco Chronicle (yet another newspaper job that ended in Twain getting chased out of town), Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was near his wits end.
With the Gold Rush happening just East of the Bay, it occurred to Clemens to reach out to a friend who had a pocket gold mine adventure going on during the tale end of the Gold Rush in a cabin within horseback riding distance of Angels Camp, CA. Here, Clemens hoped he might find enough gold to buy his way out of debt and figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. While he may not have found much that glittered, he certainly struck literary gold.
Before the Story – Mark Twain in Angels Camp, CA
While living in the depths of poverty with nothing to do but swap stories with locals and be fully immersed in the storytelling world of the Gold Rush, Clemens realized he needed to quit fooling around with telling the news and commit to becoming a fulltime fiction writer – something that was considered a very lowly profession at the time. So, after writing a couple of letters of apology to friends and family members, he submitted a story he overheard in a bar in Angels Camp. It was a tale of dastardly duplicity in the mysterious gold country and involved a wager, a colorful narrator, and a frog.
After the Story – Mark Twain in Angels Camp, CA
Nearly as soon as it was written, this short story went off like a shot heard round the world. The tale flew from paper to paper, with readers eager for any access to life inside the Gold Rush, Mark Twain’s colorful characters and storytelling genius gave a hilarious and memorable glimpse into life as a Gold Rush scoundrel that readers throughout the country and all over the world had been begging for. This happy combination resulted in the first successful work of fiction Mark Twain ever wrote, meaning that the “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” launched his career not only nationally, but internationally as well. He was suddenly an overnight and beloved sensation with townspeople the world over welcoming him wherever he traveled.
Mark Twain in Angels Camp, CA, – Today
Angels Camp, California always held a special place in Sam Clemens’ heart. For you see, Angels Camp isn’t just the place where Mark Twain found his voice, it was also the place that turned Mark Twain’s life around, and led to lifelong friendships he stay connected to well into his twilight years.
For the worldly and well-traveled Mark Twain, Angels Camp was a “sylvan paradise” and would always be a second home–a great point of pride for Angels Camp as well as for Calaveras County, the namesake of Twain’s first successful work of fiction.
Celebrating the Place Where Mark Twain Found His Voice
Join us to Jump a Frog or Meet the Ghost of Mark Twain in Angels Camp, CA
In honor of Mark Twain and his first successful work of fiction, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (transcribed below), join Calaveras County for two fabulous commemorative events held each year in Angels Camp, CA, one in Spring and one in Fall.
The Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee
The first event, known as the Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee, takes place for a four day weekend, in Angels Camp, CA the third weekend in May every year and is one of California’s longest continually running fairs. The first version of the fair began in 1893 in nearby Copperopolis, before being relocated and combined with the Frog Jump event in Angels Camp back in the 1930s. You can learn all about when, where, what, and how to join in the internationally beloved Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee here.
Mark Twain Wild West Fest
The second event is the Mark Twain Wild West Fest which takes place on the third Saturday of October and features a full day of Mark Twain and Gold Rush fun including Mark Twain characters and live Wild West gun shows. Storytelling by Mark Twain raconteur and look-alike Pat Kaunert takes place on stages throughout the event in charming, historic Angels Camp where live, Gold Rush era music and a liar’s contest also take place. A Gold Rush village is the kid zone with fence painting, knot tying, petting zoo, historic tent town, candle and soap making and much more. Learn more about the Mark Twain Wild West Fest here.
Want to Learn More About Mark Twain’s Time in California?
Mark Twain’s time in the West has even been the subject of an international award winning documentary fittingly called “88 Days in the Motherlode: Mark Twain Finds His Voice” which premiered in Angels Camp on February 21st, 2015. Watch an interview with the international award winning filmmakers on Tourism Matters, the Calaveras Visitors Bureau local TV show.
You can also read the book that inspired the filmmakers to create the documentary, called Mark Twain’s 88 Days in the Motherlode. Written by historian and master storyteller Jim Fletcher, the book relied heavily on little known passages in Mark Twain’s personal notebooks and letters, making this non-fiction work as fascinating and colorful, as Mark Twain himself.
And as a bonus, how would you like to hear the voice of this famous raconteur? While there are currently no known recording of Mark Twain, his dear friend, celebrated actor and former next-door neighbor, William Gillette, made what is considered to be the most reliable example of Mark Twain’s manner of speech, recorded at Harvard University in 1934. Enjoy William Gillette’s impression of Mark Twain’s voice here.
Find more resources about Mark Twain’s California connection here:
- Angels Camp Museum and Carriage House Mark Twain exhibit
- Cornell University: The Business of Being Mark Twain
- Humor in America: Mark Twain and the Jumping Frog
- The LA Times: The Frog that Jump-Started Mark Twain’s Career
- Award Winning Documentary:
- 88 Days in the Motherlode (book):
- Kindle: Mark Twain’s 88 Days in the Motherlode
- Paperback: Mark Twain’s 88 Days in the Motherlode
- Drunk History, Comedy Central (STRONG LANGUAGE): Mark Twain
Read The Story That Launched Mark Twain’s Career
Transcript of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain
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 nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient 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 Leonidas W. Smiley Rev. Leonidas 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 any thing 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 me 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 the 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 any thing 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. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:
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 wasn’t finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body 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 solittry thing mentioned but that feller’d offer to bet on it, and -take any 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 seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get 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 would 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’s going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better thank the Lord for his inftnit mercy and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Providence, she’d get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, “Well, I’ll risk two- and-a-half that she don’t, any way.”
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 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 wan’s 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 underjaw’d begin to stick out like the fo’castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bully- rag 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 on it not chew, you understand, but only jest grip and hang on till they thronged up the sponge, if it was a year. Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, because they’d been sawed off by 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 bolt, he saw in a minute how he’d been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ’peered sur- prised, 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 bolt 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 had 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 of 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’klated to edercate 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 catching flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do most any thing 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 again as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent 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 straightforward 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 kept 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 across 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, may be, but it an’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, I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
“May be you don’t,” Smiley says. “May be you understand frogs, and may be you don’t understand ’em; may be you’ve had experience, and may be you an’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got my opinion, and I’ll risk 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 an’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 tea- spoon 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, and I’ll give the word.” Then he says, “One two three jump!” and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan’l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders so like a Frenchman, but it wan’s no use he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, 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 shoulders this way at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well, 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 an’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 lifted him up 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 ketchd him. And-
Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up to see what was wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy I an’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 recommenced:
“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow that didn’t have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and “
“Oh! hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!” I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.
?The end. ?
For assistance with your Mark Twain research, or planning your trip to Calaveras County, our office is available 7 days a week at 1-209-736-0049 or via email at info@gocalaveras.com. You can explore the rest of the county by visiting our homepage www.gocalaveras.com or by requesting a copy of our Calaveras Visitors Guide here.