The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to
make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months
he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a
sauter) in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison). And I you
respond that he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind,
and the instant after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a
grease-biscuit, make one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well
started, and refall upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished
in the art of to gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there
exercised continually--so well that a fly at the most far that she
appeared was a fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked
to a frog it was the education, but with the education she could do
nearly all--and I him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel
Webster there upon this plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the
frog--and to him sing, 'Some flies, Daniel, some flies!'--in a fash of
the eye Daniel had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter, then
jumped anew at the earth, where he rested truly to himself scratch the
head with his behind-foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his
superiority. Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet
as she was. And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon
plain earth, she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his
species than you can know.
To jump plain--this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that
Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him remained a
red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he
of it was right, for some men who were travelled, who had all seen,
said that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog.
Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried bytimes
to the village for some bet.
One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and
him said:
'What is this that you have then shut up there within?'
Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
'That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is
nothing of such, it not is but a frog.'
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side
and from the other, then he said:
'Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?'
'My God!' responded Smiley, always with an air disengaged, 'she is good
for one thing, to my notice (a mon avis), she can better in jumping
(elle peut batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.'
The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it
rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
'Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
frog.' (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
grenouille.) (If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no
judge.--M.T.)
'Possible that you not it saw not,' said Smiley; 'possible that you--you
comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be
but an amateur. Of all manner (de toute manière) I bet forty dollars
that she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the country of
Calaveras.'
The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:
'I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had
one, I would embrace the bet.'
'Strong, well!' respond Smiley; 'nothing of more facility. If you will
hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher.)'
Behold, then, the individual who guards the box, who puts his forty
dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attendre). He
attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he
takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills
with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him
puts by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp.
Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
said:
'Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet
upon the same line, and I give the signal'--then he added: 'One, two
three--advance!'
Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new
put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exhalted the
shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? He could not budge, he
is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him
had put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not
of the turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour bien
entendre). The indidivual empocketed the silver, himself with it went,
and of it himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over
the shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air
deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant
est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce pas-dessus l'épaule, comme
ça, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air délibéré).
'Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than
another.'
Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,
until that which at last he said:
'I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.
Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.'
He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:
'The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds.'
He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le
malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognised how it was, he was like mad.
He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he
not him caught never.
It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but
I am not acquainted with them.
So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County, an incident which has this unique feature about it--that it is
both old and new, a 'chestnut' and not a 'chestnut;' for it was original
when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it
happened in California in our own time.
P.S.
London, July, 1900.--Twice, recently, I have been asked this question:
'Have you seen the Greek version of the “Jumping Frog”?'
And twice I have answered--'No.'
'Has Professor Van Dyke seen it?'
'I suppose so.'
'Then you supposition is at fault.'
'Why?'
'Because there isn't any such version.'
'Do you mean to intimate that the tale is modern, and not borrowed from
some ancient Greek book.'
'Yes. It is not permissible for any but the very young and innocent to
be so easily beguiled as you and Van Dyke have been.'
'Do you mean that we have fallen a prey to our ignorance and
simplicity?'
'Yes. Is Van Dyke a Greek scholar?'
'I believe so.'
'Then he knew where to find the ancient Greek version if one existed.
Why didn't he look? Why did he jump to conclusions?'
'I don't know. And was it worth the trouble, anyway?'
As it turns out, now, it was not claimed that the story had been
translated from the Greek. It had its place among other uncredited
stories, and was there to be turned into Greek by students of that
language. 'Greek Prose Composition'--that title is what made the
confusion. It seemed to mean that the originals were Greek. It was not
well chosen, for it was pretty sure to mislead.
Thus vanishes the Greek Frog, and I am sorry: for he loomed fine and
grand across the sweep of the ages, and I took a great pride in him.
M.T.
(1) Sidgwick, Greek Prose Composition, page 116
MY MILITARY CAMPAIGN
You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is
it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started
out to do something in it, but didn't? Thousands entered the war, got
just a taste of it, and then stepped out again, permanently. These, by
their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to a
sort of voice--not a loud one, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but
an apologetic one. They ought not to be allowed much space among better
people--people who did something--I grant that; but they ought at least
to be allowed to state why they didn't do anything, and also to explain
the process by which they didn't do anything. Surely this kind of light
must have a sort of value.
Out West there was a good deal of confusion in men's minds during the
first months of the great trouble--a good deal of unsettledness, of
leaning first this way, then that, then the other way. It was hard
for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an instance of this. I was
piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had
gone out of the Union on December 20, 1860. My pilot-mate was a New
Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen
to me with any patience; my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my
father had owned slaves. I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that
I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a
great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if
he could think it right to give away the property of the family when
he was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was
nothing--anybody could pretend to a good impulse; and went on decrying
my Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession
atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi, and I
became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans, January 26,
when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his full share of the rebel
shouting, but was bitterly opposed to letting me do mine. He said that I
came of bad stock--of a father who had been willing to set slaves free.
In the following summer he was piloting a Federal gun-boat and shouting
for the Union again, and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note
for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew;
but he repudiated that note without hesitation, because I was a rebel,
and the son of a man who had owned slaves.
In that summer--of 1861--the first wash of the wave of war broke upon
the shores of Missouri. Our State was invaded by the Union forces. They
took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points.
The Governor, Claib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty
thousand militia to repel the invader.
I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been
spent--Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret
place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom
Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military
experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no
first lieutenant; I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen
of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organisation,
we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one
found fault with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well.
The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of
the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric
novels and singing forlorn love-ditties. He had some pathetic little
nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was
Dunlap; detested it, partly because it was nearly as common in that
region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his
ear. So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: d'Unlap. That
contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the