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The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County Summary

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For the Unit 5 discussion forum I chose the short and humorous story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by Mark Twain (1867).
I picked this tale because of the author that I had already known during my studies many years ago.
The short tale was included in the book having the same title published by George Routledge and Sons, London, in 1867; this book is a collection of humorous tales and it is considered as a masterpiece of Mark Twain’s literary production.

The plot refers to the quest of information about such Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, an old friend’s friend of the author. Mark Twain, writing in the first person makes to understand that the search was conducted by himself and he reports the funny and surreal conversation with his source of information the “good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler” (Twain, 1867, p. 1). …show more content…

Smiley was a fictional person never really known by his friend and that the real reason of this research was to make him meet the old Wheeler and his unbelievable stories about such Jim Smiley (Twain, 1867).
Jim Smiley was a feller, a lumberman working at Angel’s Camp, with a huge passion for betting on everything, everyone and obviously every animal too.
This Jim Smiley had a frog, named Dan'l Webster, with such a great ability in jumping to be considered the strongest jumping frog in all Calaveras County. Obviously, Jim did not hesitate to bet on this skill against another stranger lumberman, but unexpectedly, his frog didn't jump that time and for that reason Jim lost the bet. What happened? I suggest reading the story to know it.
However the old Simon Wheeler had already started with a new strange story about Jim Smiley's

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