Jim Smily and His Jumping Frog
Mark Twain
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Vol. X, Part 5.
Selected by Charles William Eliot
Copyright © , Inc.
Bibliographic Record
Contents
Biographical Note
Criticisms and Interpretations
I. By T. Edgar Pemberton
商店英语II. By Albert Bigelow Paine
III. By Archibald Henderson
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Jim Smily and His Jumping Frog
Biographical Note
SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS, the son of a country merchant from Tenne, was born at Florida Missouri, on November 30, 1835. His boyhood was spent in Hannibal, Missouri; but his father’s death in 1847 cut short the boy’s schooling and nt him out into the world at an early age. He learned type-tting, and in the pursuit of this craft he wandered as far east as New York. When he was venteen he returned to the west and became a pilot on the Mississippi, an occupation he followed until traffic was interrupted by the war. Drifting farther west to Nevada, he saw something of mining and began to write for the newspapers, using as his pen name “Mark Twain,” from a call ud in recording soundings on the Mississippi. Finally reaching California, he made the acquaintance of Bret Harte, then in the San Francisco Mint, and told him the story of “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” It was the publication of this famous yarn that first brought him into notice; and a San Francisco newspaper enabled him to join a party which had chartered a steamer for a Mediterranean tour. His first book, “The Innocents Abroad,” was made from the letters written on this
trip, and it immediately achieved a wide popularity. Availing himlf of the publicity thus won, he took to the lecture platform, where he delighted his audiences with his extraordinary talent for story-telling and his droll humor. After a short
period as editor of a Buffalo newspaper, he ttled with his wife at Hartford, Connecticut, and devoted himlf to writing. The chief publications of the next few years were “Roughing It” (1872); “The Gilded Age,” in which he collaborated with C. D. Warner and which was successfully dramatized; and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1875), the first of his novels of the Mississippi Valley. A cond trip to Europe produced “A Tramp Abroad” (1880), followed by “The Prince and the Pauper,” “Life on the Mississippi,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” (1884) a quel to “Tom Sawyer;” “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur;” and “The American Claimant.”
Meantime he had become heavily interested in a New York publishing hou, which went into bankruptcy about 1893. Like Sir Walter Scott in similar circumstances, he t himlf to pay off his indebtedness, and by 1900 he was again clear. In the interval he had produced his third novel of the Mississippi Valley, “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson” (1894) and a historical romance, “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.” He made a tour of the world, lecturing and collecting material for his “Following the Equator,” and arranged for a complete edition of his works, issued in 1899–1900.
Though he continued to write almost to the end, his most distinguished work was done, and during the last ten years of his life he reaped the reward he had richly earned. His books brought him in a large income, and he had become the “grand old man” of American letters. Oxford University gave him the degree of doctor of literature in 1907, and his reception in England was marked by great enthusiasm. He died at Redding, Connecticut, on April 21, 1910.公司内账
Mark Twain is most widely known as a humorist, and among American humorists it may fairly be claimed that he stands first. In his comic exaggeration and solemn, inextricable mingling of fact and absurdity he was carried to its highest point the type of humor most characteristic of this country. But he was much more than a humorist. He was a master of simple and effective narrative and of vivid description; and his novels of the Mississippi belong to that valuable class which have fixed for posterity a whole pha of life that has pasd away. Moreover, underneath his comedy there lay depths of a somewhat melancholy wisdom, and a great capacity for righteous indignation. More and more America has come to recognize that her chief master of comedy was also a sage.
W. A. N.
Criticisms and Interpretations
I. By T. Edgar Pemberton
BRET HARTE has himlf told the story of how while occupied with his cretarial duties at the San Francisco Mint—and his literary work religiously carried on outside mint hours—George Barnes, a brother journalist, introduced him to a young man who appearance was decidedly interesting. “His head” he writes, “was striking. He had the curly hair, the aquiline no, and even the aquiline eye—an eye so eagle-like that a cond lid would not have surprid me—of an unusual and dominant nature. His eyebrows were very thick and bushy. His dress was careless, and his general manner one of supreme indifference to surroundings and circumstances. Barnes introduced him as Mr. Sam Clemens, and remarked that he had shown a very unusual talent in a number of newspaper articles contributed over the signature of ‘Mark Twain.’ We talked on different topics, and about a month afterwards Clemens dropped in upon me again. He had been away in the mining districts on some newspaper assignment in the meantime. In the cour of conversation he remarked that the unearthly laziness that prevailed in the
town he had been visiting was beyond anything in his previous experience. He said the men did nothing all day long but sit around the bar-room stove, spit, and “swop lies.” He spoke in a slow, rather satirical drawl, which was in itlf irresistible. He went on to tell one of tho extravagant stori
es, and half unconsciously dropped into the lazy tone and manner of the original narrator. It was as graphic as it was delicious. I asked him to tell it again to a friend who came in, and then asked him to write it out for “The Californian.” He did so, and when published it was an emphatic success. It was the first work of his that attracted general attention, and it crosd the Sierras for an Eastern reading. The story was “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras.” It is known and laughed over, I suppo, 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 himlf on that morning in San Francisco Mint.—From “Bret Harte” (1900).
Criticisms and Interpretations
II. By Albert Bigelow Paine
IT is difficult to judge the Jumping Frog story to-day. It has the intrinsic fundamental value of one of
Æsop’s Fables. 1 It contains a basic idea which is esntially ludicrous, and the quaint simplicity of its telling is convincing and full of charm. It appeared in print at a time when American humor was chaotic, the public taste unformed. We had a vast appreciation for what was comic, with no great number of opportunities for showing it. We were so ready to laugh that when a real opportunity came
along we improved it and kept on laughing and repeating the cau of our merriment, directing the attention of our friends to it. Whether the story of “Jim Smily’s Frog,” offered for the first time to-day, would capture the public, and become the initial block of a towering fame, is another matter. That the author himlf under-rated it is certain. That the public, receiving it at what we now term the psychological moment, may have over-rated it is by no means impossible. In any ca, it does not matter now. The stone rejected by the builder was made the corner-stone of his literary edifice. As such it is immortal.—From “Mark Twain” (1912).
防守英文Criticisms and Interpretations
III. By Archibald Henderson
MARK TWAIN was a great humorist—more genial than grim, more good-humored than ironic, more given to imaginative exaggeration than to intellectual sophistication, more inclined to pathos than to melancholy. He was a great story-teller and fabulist; and he has enriched the literature of the world with a gallery of portraits so human in their likeness as to rank them with the great figures of classic comedy and picaresque romance. He was a remarkable obrver and faithful reporter, never allowing himlf, in Ibn’s phra, to be “frightened by the venerableness of the institutions”; and hi
s sublimated journalism reveals a mastery of the naïvely comic thoroughly human and democratic. He is the most eminent product of our American democracy, and, in profoundly shocking Great Britain by preferring Connecticut to Camelot, he exhibited that robustness of outlook, that buoyancy of spirit, and that faith in the contemporary which stamps America in perennial and inexhaustible youth. Throughout his long life, he has been a factor of high ethical influence in our civilization, and the philosopher and the humanitarian look out through the twinkling eyes of the humorist.—From “Mark Twain” (1900).
Jim Smily and His Jumping Frog
MR. A. WARD, 2
DEAR SIR:—武汉教育培训
Well, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smily, as you requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. If you can get any information out of it you are cordially welcome to it. I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smily is a myth—that you never knew such a personage, and that you only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smily, and he would go to wor
k and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be uless to me. If that was your design, Mr. Ward, it will gratify you to know that it succeeded.
I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the little old dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Boomerang, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roud 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. Smily—Rev. Leonidas W. Smily—a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of this village of Boomerang. I added that if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smily, I would feel under many obligations to him.
美国总统辩论第3场Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair—and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the quiet, gently-flowing key to which he turned the initial ntence, 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 f
ar from his imagining that there was anything 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 fines. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting renely 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. Smily, 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 Smily, in the winter of ’49—or maybe it was the spring of ’50—I don’t recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is becau I remember the big flume wasn’t finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiost man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever e, if he could get anybody 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 solitary thing mentioned but what that feller’d offer to bet on it—and take any side you plea, as I was just telling you; if there was a hor 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 tting on a fenc
e, he would bet you which one would fly first—or if there was a camp-meeting he would be there reglar 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 e 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 en that Smily and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him—he would bet on anything—the dangdest feller. Parson Walker’s wife laid very sick, once, for a good while, and it emed as if they warn’t going to save her; but one morning he come in and Smily asked him how she was, and he said she was considerable better—thank the Lord for his infinite mercy—and coming on so smart that with the blessing of Providence she’d get well yet—and Smily, before he thought, says, “Well, I’ll resk two-and-a-half that she don’t, anyway.”
Thish-yer Smily had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, becau, of cour, she was faster than that—and he u to win money on that hor, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They u to give her two or three hundred yards’ start, and then pass her under way; but al
mba报名ways at the fag-end of the race she’d get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and spraddling 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 no—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 warn’t worth a cent, but to t around and look onery, and lay for a chance to steal something. But as soon as money was up on him he was a different dog—his under-jaw’d begin to stick out like the for’castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bullyrag 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 el—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 just by the joint of his hind legs and freeze to it—not chaw, you understand, but only just grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year. Smily always came out winner on that pup till he harnesd a dog once that didn’t have no hind legs, becau they’d been sawed off in a circular saw,
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and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money was all up, and he came to make a snatch for his pet holt, he saw in a minute how he’d been impod on, and how the other dog had him in the door, so to speak, and he ’peared surprid, 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 gave Smily 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 holt 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 hislf if he’d lived, for the stuff was in him, and he had genius—I know it, becau he hadn’t 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.venza
Well, thish-yer Smily had rat-terriers and chicken-cocks, and tom-cats, and all 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’lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but t 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 hunch behind, and the next minute you’d e that frog whirling in the a
ir like a doughnut—e him turn one summert, or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down失控玩家有没有彩蛋
