“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
by Mark Twain
THE LITERARY WORK
A short story about an event that allegedly occurred in California during the gold rush days; published in 1865.
SYNOPSIS
A local man bets a stranger that his frog will win a jumping contest. At an opportune moment, the stranger pours small bullets into the mouth of the man’s frog. The bullets make the frog so heavy that it cannot jump, and the stranger’s frog wins the contest.
Events in History at the Time of the Short Story
Mark Twain first earned his reputation as a fiction writer with the publication of “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” originally entitled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” Trained as a journalist, Twain lived in the West for most of the Civil War. In 1864 and 1865, he spent several months mining around Angel’s Camp, California, where he supposedly heard a version of the story from a camp bartender. Like a true journalist, Twain noted the anecdote. He developed it into a fictional piece less than a year later, gaining nationwide recognition as a premier humorist and short-story writer from its publication.
Events in History at the Time of the Short Story
Mining camps and the “forty-niners.”
In 1848, two weeks before Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceding California to the United States, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill. The discovery enticed 100,000 people to California within a year and induced 250,000 more people to emigrate within the next three years. By the summer of 1849,40,000 gold-seekers, or “forty-niners,” as they were called, headed west. By 1850, 80,000 gold-seekers reached the West Coast; these early fortune-hunters shaped the history and settlement patterns of early California.
Angel’s Camp was the site of several important gold discoveries. One of the richest finds occurred in November 1854 at the Morgan Mine, which was located about four miles south of Angel’s Camp. Discovered there was a mass of gold weighing 195 pounds, the largest nugget known to have been found in the United States.
Such discoveries lured people of all races and nationalities. Among those who rushed to California were miners from the Mississippi River Valley called “Pikes,” East Coast Yankees, Australians, Irishmen, Englishmen, Hawaiians, Mexicans, and Frenchmen. Mining towns and camps sprang up overnight, quickly gaining distinctive characters as revealed by their names: Whiskey Bar, Humbug Creek, Gouge Eye, Lousy Level, Devil’s Retreat, Flapjack Canyon, You Bet, Git-Up-and-Git, and Chicken-Thief Flat.
Despite their colorful names, however, most mining camps were rather ugly places, extremely dusty during the summer and muddy during the winter. People threw garbage everywhere; empty sardine boxes, old boots, and bottles littered the ground. Not surprisingly, dysentery, scurvy, diarrhea, malaria, and other maladies flourished in these camps.
Early miners lived in shanties, often made from shirts tacked onto wooden frames. So exorbitant were food and living expenses that meals generally consisted of hard bread, beans, pork, and strong coffee. In the winter of 1849-50, for example, potatoes cost $1 a pound; eggs cost $.50 each and apples cost $.75 for two. Tobacco sold for $2 a pound and a box of sardines cost as much as $16. Laundry cleaners charged $8 to wash twelve shirts; some miners found it cheaper to send their dirty clothes to China.
Social life differed greatly from the East. Women were rare and the few who lived in the camps and towns were usually prostitutes. In fact, women were so scarce that in one camp a man exhibited a lady’s bonnet and boots for $1 a look. Typically men in the camps spent their leisure time drinking and gambling; otherwise they turned to singing, dancing, fiddle-playing, cockfights, bear and bullfights, and traveling shows for entertainment.
Gambling
Gambling became one of the most common pastimes in nineteenth-century mining camps. Almost everybody gambled, even children as young as ten or twelve years old. Furthermore, gambling was not restricted to miners alone; loggers, cowboys, railroad workers, and American Indians all took part in the games of chance. Gamblers wagered gold by the ounce and quickly lost and won fortunes. One reason for this careless wagering was that many people assumed that there was a large amount of gold yet to be discovered in the area. They reasoned that what was lost in gambling would soon be recovered in prospecting. Gamblers in California soon became famous for their recklessness; in 1849 one New York reporter described them as “mad, stark mad” (Hicks, p. 83).
Con men and entrepreneurs quickly took advantage of the gambling fever in the mining camps. “Lucky Bill” Thorington was one such opportunist. A master of the “shell game,” Thorington invited people to correctly pick the shell that contained a hidden pea. Using trickery, he won one hundred pounds of gold in two months. Saloons and gambling halls sprang up anywhere gold was discovered, and proprietors eagerly helped part the miners from their riches. Many gambling establishments in the 1850s were quite elegant, as this description of a typical saloon shows:
The roof, rich with giltwork, is supported by pillars of glass; and the walls are hung with French paintings of great merit.... Green tables are scattered over the room, at each of which sit two “monte” dealers surrounded by a betting crowd. The centers of the tables are covered with gold ounces and rich specimens from the diggings, and these heaps accumulate very rapidly in the course of the evening.
(Cummings and White, p. 116)
Not all gambling establishments were quite so refined, however. Monte tables were often set up in the streets of less ostentatious towns and camps. Faro, roulette, rondo, and blackjack were also commonly played. Even the most modest gambling halls, however, had something in common with the more refined establishments: cheating was rampant.
Of course, not all gambling revolved around formal games, as “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” implies. People placed bets on the most ridiculous situations; the consequences were apparently unimportant. One miner, for example, bragged about his throwing abilities. In response, his partner bet him $1.50 that he couldn’t hit the bar mirror with a beer glass. The miner threw the glass, won the bet, and paid the bartender $175 for a new mirror. In another example, two Marysville ice dealers bet on whose block of ice could last longer in the summer heat. Twain’s humorous story thus portrays the devil-may-care attitude that existed in the West in the mid-1800s.
Western humor
During the nineteenth century, the West developed its own particular brand of humor, which included generous doses of tall tales and practical jokes. On the Great Plains of the Old West, for example, cowboys put bull snakes in their companions’ bedrolls or burrs under the saddles of other riders’ horses. By such standards, Eastern humor was considered rather stodgy. Eastern publications followed a British-style humor, and often had to explain to their audience which sections of their publications were funny and why. Needless to say, this audience often did not “get” Western humor, much to the delight of the Westerners.
Tall tales were widely printed in almanacs and newspapers during the early 1800s and reached their peak between 1850 and 1865. Early Western newspapers played a particularly large role in developing and perpetrating these humorous stories. More personal and colorful than their modern-day counterparts, early newspaper names included the Cripple Creek Crusher, the Arizona Kicker, the Gringo and Greaser, and the Boomerang of Wyoming. Newspapers commonly invented hoaxes to boost sales and to keep their readership interested when there was nothing newsworthy to report. Since most people knew the local news before the newspaper was distributed, hoaxes served as huge sources of amusement for readers. Many Westerners assumed that people knew when they were being lied to; those who did not obviously did not belong out West.
During part of his stay in the West, Mark Twain worked with William Wight, the chief reporter and staff writer for the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada. Wight, whose pen name was DeQuille, was a master hoaxer. On one occasion, DeQuille reported the discovery of small stones that, when scattered, suddenly rushed together towards a center and huddled up like a bunch of eggs in a nest. DeQuille’s hoax traveled around the world, and for the next fifteen years he was plagued by hundreds of curious letters from scientists, circuses, and vendors. Another time, DeQuille published the alleged discovery of the rare “Shoo Fly,” a bug that the Indians ate as a delicacy. DeQuille received a letter from an entomologist in San Francisco who informed him that he would receive credit for the discovery if he packed a specimen and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution. DeQuille reprinted the scholar’s advice in his paper, as well as his response:
What the professor says may be true, but when we view the insect and consider its cuspidated tentacles and the scarabaeus formation of the thoracic pellicle, we are inclined to think it a genuine bug of the genus ‘hum’.
(Emrich, p. 289)
Mark Twain’s first hoax, which appeared on October 5, 1862, concerned a claim that a petrified man had been discovered:
The body was in a sitting posture, and leaning against a huge mass of croppings; the attitude was pensive, the right thumb resting against the side of the nose; the left thumb partially supported the chin, the forefinger pressing the inner corner of the left eye and drawing it partly open; the right eye was closed, and the fingers of the right hand spread apart.
(Twain in Brown, pp. 60-1)
Only the careful reader discerned that Twain’s “discovery” was found thumbing his nose.
Twain’s hoax was probably based on another story that claimed some strange, live animals were found in the Western Territory. This story was reprinted in New York without any indication that it was supposed to be humorous.
Nobody knows whether or not Easterners actually believed such stories, but Western journalists delighted in presenting made-up tales as if they were factual, perhaps believing that they could fool Eastern readers. Likewise, oral storytellers often employed a similar technique, relating their exaggerated and humorous tales as if they were serious and truthful accounts. Such a “straight-faced” delivery made the telling even more funny. Such oral stories, and their written counterparts, proved popular, and the spinning of tall tales soon developed into an art form.
Frog jumping
Scholars remain unsure whether or not frog-jumping contests actually occurred in Angel’s Camp during Mark Twain’s era. Today, Angel’s Camp city officials like to claim that such contests took place, but little evidence exists to support their contention. The only indication that frog jumping contests were common in the area in the 1860s stems from an interview with Angel’s Camp resident Jess May in the late 1920s. May claimed to have seen the frog jumping contest that Twain featured in his short story. According to May, the participants were “city slickers” and the contest occurred about one year before Twain arrived at the camp.
The first official frog jumping contest, however, took place in 1928. The city of Angel’s Camp made plans to celebrate their newly paved streets. Planned festivities included a rodeo, races, and mining contests. Two of the planners, Carl Mills and Harry Barden, decided to call the festivities the “Jumping Frog Jubilee” and to hold a frog jumping contest. Although they initially encountered difficulties persuading the city officials, their idea caught the imagination of others, and newspapers all over the West carried the story. The contest was held on May 28, 1928. There were 51 entries from all over the state, and nearly 15,000 people came to cheer the jumpers. Although many of the frogs unexpectedly jumped sideways, the winner was the “Jumping Frog of the San Joaquin,” which jumped three feet, six inches. The next year, 20,000 people showed up for the contest and 500 frogs were entered, including one shipped from France.
The Short Story in Focus
The plot
As the story begins, Simon Wheeler, an old, garrulous resident of Angel’s Camp, is in a store in the settlement. An unnamed Eastern man asks Simon about a friend of a friend. Wheeler does not know the whereabouts of the person, but instead launches into a comic story about another man with a similar name. Wheeler tells about Jim Smiley, a camp resident in approximately 1850. A man who liked to bet, Smiley gambled on nearly everything. He bet on standard gambling contests such as chicken fights and dog fights as well as more unusual things. Smiley bet on the most minor aspects of everyday life, wagering on when a bird might fly away, for instance. While Smiley didn’t seem to care which side he took, he often ended up winning anyway.
One day, Smiley caught a frog. He named the frog Daniel Webster and taught it to jump. The frog learned to jump so well that he could jump and catch flies long-distance. All Jim Smiley had to do was yell, “Flies, Dan’l, flies!” and the frog would jump (Twain, “The Notorious Jumping Frog,” p. 4). Soon he was betting regularly on Daniel’s jumping capabilities. Jim Smiley felt very proud of his pet, noting that “all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ‘most anything’” (“The Notorious Jumping Frog,” p. 4).
One day a stranger entered the camp. The stranger observed Jim Smiley’s frog and asked what the frog could do. Jim proudly replied that Daniel could outjump any frog in Calaveras County, and offered to bet $40 on his claim. The stranger replied that if he had a frog, he’d take the bet; so Jim offered to catch one for him. While Jim busily set out to catch a frog for his challenger, the stranger opened Daniel Webster’s mouth and filled him with quail-shot “pretty near up to his chin” (“The Notorious Jumping Frog,” p. 5).
After a while, Jim returned with the stranger’s frog. “Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his fore paws just even with Dan’l’s, and I’ll give the word” (“The Notorious Jumping Frog,” p. 5). Each man touched his frog’s behind to make it jump. The stranger’s frog leaped high, while poor Daniel gave a push and went nowhere. The stranger took the money and departed, leaving Jim confused. A few moments later, however, Jim picked up Daniel and realized something was wrong. When he turned the frog upside down, out poured several handfuls of quail-shot. Furious, Jim chased after the stranger, but he was unable to catch him.
Simon Wheeler, the narrator, is about to continue with more adventures concerning Jim Smiley’s amazing animals, but a voice from the back of the store interrupts him and he excuses himself. Bored by the story, the hapless Easterner quickly takes advantage of the momentary interruption to exit rather indignantly.
Twain’s politics and writing
Twain’s early hoaxes and other writings were humorous. Yet, unlike the writings of many of his colleagues, they also contained traces of political and social criticism. “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” contains several hints of social and political satire. Twain not only depicts the polished Easterner as something of a buffoon, but he also uses the vernacular Western dialect to enhance his story. During Twain’s time this was not a common practice, and some critics considered it a rebellious stance against stuffy Eastern writing standards.
Furthermore, Twain named the pets owned by the character Jim Smiley after political figures of the era. Smiley’s dog, called Andrew Jackson, is characterized by Twain as a feisty fighting bulldog who overcomes his opponents by biting their hind leg and grimly holding on. When the dog encounters an opponent without hind legs, he loses the fight and dies soon after. Smiley’s frog is named Daniel Webster, a prominent politician and occasional opponent of Andrew Jackson. Webster was instrumental in helping pass the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California into the nation as a free state. Twain was obviously having fun at the expense of public figures of the day.
Sources
Most sources appear to agree that Mark Twain heard a version of this story while visiting Angel’s Camp in 1865. Furthermore, most agree that a bartender at the Tryon Hotel, a man named either Ben or Ross Coon, told Twain the narrative. Apparently, Mr. Coon was an excellent storyteller who claimed to have first heard the tale in Mississippi. The main characters in Coon’s story were allegedly African American. Mark Twain himself claimed that the story took place at Angel’s Camp in the spring of 1849 and that the tale was told to him as history. Furthermore, two versions of the jumping frog story can be found in newspapers of that area prior to 1864, one in the San Andreas Independent (December 11, 1858) and the following one in the Sonora Herald (June 11, 1853):
A Toad Story.—A long stupid looking fellow [a Yankee] used to frequent a gambling saloon, some time since, and was in the habit of promenading up and down, but never speaking.... One day he came in with an important air, and said:
“I have got a toad that’ll leap further than any toad you can scare up.... I’ll bet money on it. Barkeeper, give me a cigar box to hold my toad in.”
The fun was great, and the oddity was the talk of all hands. A gambler, in the evening, happened to come across a very big frog, fetched him to the gaming house and offered to jump him against the Yankee’s toad.
“Well,” says Yank, “I’ll bet liquors on it.” A chalk line was made and the toad put down. They struck the boards behind the toad and he leaped six feet, then the frog leaped seven.
[The Yank paid the gambler but, refusing to be bested, challenged him again the next morning and won. The story continues:]
“My frog is darned heavy this morning,” says the gambler.
“I reckoned it would be, stranger,” says the Yankee, “for I rolled a pound of shot into him last night.”
(Appendix to Lewis, pp. 31-2)
Twain also found a version of the jumping frog story in Dr. Henry Sidgwick’s textbook Greek Prose Composition. In this version, the contest occurred between an Athenian and a Boethian. Many excited people, upon hearing of this version, thought that the story might actually stem from a Greek fable, while Twain hypothesized that similar stories had developed separately. Dr. Sidgwick eventually wrote to Twain and explained that he had found Twain’s story so charming that he translated it into Greek with minor alterations and included it in his book.
Reviews
Mark Twain originally sent his story to Artemus Ward in New York for inclusion in a book of humor. The story’s arrival in New York was tardy, however, so Ward sent it to another publication. Originally entitled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” the piece was published in New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. A humorous, Western story, it provided a welcome relief to readers who were weary of Civil War news. An article in the Alta Californian on January 10, 1866, reported how New Yorkers reacted to the story:
Mark Twain’s story in the Saturday Press on November 18, called “Jim Smiley’s Jumping Frog,” has set all New York in a roar, and he may be said to have made his mark. I have been asked fifty times about it and its author, and the papers are copying it far and near. It is voted the best thing of its day.
(Lewis, p. 19)
The story became an immediate hit, securing Twain’s reputation as a fiction writer. Yet Twain himself appeared ambivalent about the story’s reception. He later wrote:
To think that, after writing many an article a man might be excused for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on—a squib which would never have been written but to please Artemus Ward, and then it reached New York too late to appear in his book.
(Twain in Lewis, p. 18)
The success of “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” brought Twain offers to publish a book of his short stories, a project enthusiastically embraced by editor Charles Henry Webb. Twain and Webb combined to prepare Twain’s first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog, and Other Sketches, with Webb editing Twain’s writing. Twain announced its price in the Alta California—$1.50 a copy. “It will have a truly gorgeous gold frog on the back of it and that frog alone will be worth the money. I don’t know but what it would be well to publish the frog and leave the book out” (Twain in David, p. 9).
For More Information
Cummins, Duane D., and William Gee White. The American Frontier. Encino, Calif.: Glencoe, 1980.
David, Beverly R. Mark Twain and His Illustrators, Vol. 1. Troy, N.Y.: Whitston, 1986.
Emrich, Duncan. It’s an Old Wild West Custom. New York: Vanguard, 1949.
Hicks, Jim, ed. The Gamblers. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1978.
Lewis, Oscar. The Origin of the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1931.
Twain, Mark. “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” In The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain. Edited by Charles Neider. New York: Bantam, 1990.