and half-unconsciously dropped into the lazy tone and manner of the
original narrator. I asked him to tell it again to a friend who
came in, and they asked him to write it for 'The Californian'. He
did so, and when published it was an emphatic success. It was the
first work of his that had attracted general attention, and it
crossed the Sierras for an Eastern reading. The story was 'The
Jumping Frog of Calaveras.' It is now known and laughed over, I
suppose, wherever the English language is spoken; but it will never
be as funny to anyone in print as it was to me, told for the first
time, by the unknown Twain himself, on that morning in the San
Francisco Mint."

When Artemus Ward passed through California on a literary tour in 1864,
Mark Twain regaled him--as he regaled all worthy acquaintances--with his
favourite story, 'The Jumping Frog'. Ward was delighted with it.

"Write it out," he said, "give it all the necessary touches, and let me
use it in a volume of sketches I am preparing for the press. Just send
it to Carleton, my publisher, in New York."

It arrived too late for Ward's book, and Carleton presented it to Henry
Clapp, who published it in his paper, The Saturday Press of November 18,
1864. In his Autobiography, Mr. Clemens has narrated how 'The Jumping
Frog' put a quietus on 'The Saturday Press', and was immediately copied
in numerous newspapers in England and America. He was always proud of
the celebrity that story achieved; but he never sought to claim the
credit for himself. He freely admits that it was not Mark Twain, but
the frog, that became celebrated. The author, alas, remained in
obscurity!