Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1866-01-06
jim. SMILEY
And His Jumping Frog.
By MARE TWAIN.

By MARE TWAIN.
-TnMark Twain" is as well known on tn
Pacific side Of the Rocky Mountains as
humorous writer, as Artemus Ward Of
this side. His chief forte appears to b
his complste familiarity with the idiom
of California miners and roughs, and hi
keen appreciation of the ludicrOus inthem
This was remarkably manifest in a LITTLE
sketch entitled 'He Done His Level Best
which went the rounds of the press a few
months ago, and is hardly less manifest il
the following exquisitely humorous pro.
duction, written by him for the New YorE
Saturday Press;]
MI. A. WARD:
DEAR SIR;-Weil, I called on good-na-
tured, ~garralous old Simon Wheeler, and
1 inquired after your friend Leonidas W.
Smiley, as you requested me to do, and ]
hereunto append the result. If you can
get any information out of it you are cor
daily welcome to it. I have a lurking
suspicion that your Leonidas w. Smiley
is q myth-that you never knew such a
parsonage, and that you only conjectured
that if I asked old Wheeler about him it
would remind him of his infamous Jim
Smiley, and he would go to workand bore
me-nearly to death with some internal
"reminiscences of him as long and tedious
as it should be uselesst to me. If that was
your design, Mr.. Ward, it will crafty you
to krow that It succeeded.
1 found Simon Wheeler doing COM
fertably by the bar-room stove of the lit
tie old dilapidated tavern in the ancient
mining camp of Boomerang, and / no
tlced that he was fat and bald-headed, and
had an expression of winning gentleness
and simplicity upon his tranquil counten-
day. 1 told him a friend of mine had
commissioned me to make some inquiries
about a cherished companion of his boy
hood named Leonidas W. Smiley-Rev.
Leonidas w. Smiley young minister
of the gospel, who he heard was at one
time a resident of this village of Boeme-
rang. 1 added that if Mr.. Wheeler could
tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas
W. Smiley, I would feel under many OBJ
legations TO him.
Simon Wheeler backed me into q cor
ner and blockaded me there with his chair
and then sat down and reeled of the
monotonous narrative which follows this
paragraph. He never smiled, he v
frowned, he never changed his voice from
the quiet, gently-howing key to which he
tuned the initial sentence, he never betray-
ed the slightest suspicion Of enthusiasm
but all through the interminable narrative
there ran q vein of impressive eanestness
and sincerity which showed me plainly
that so far from his imagining that there
was anything ridiculous or funny about
his story, be regarded it as a really i'm
portant matter, and admired its two he
roes as men of transcendent genius
in fnesse. To me, the spectacle of q man
drifting serenely along through such a.
queer yarn without ever smiling was ex-
quisitely absurd. As 1 said before, I
asked him to tell me what he knew of
Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied
as follows. / let him go on in his own
way and never interrupted him once:
There was q Teller here once BY the
name Of Jam Smiley, in the winter of '49.
maybe it was in the spring Of SOL
don't remember exactly, somehow though
what makes me think it was one or the
other is because the big fume wasn't I'm
ished when he first come to the camp; but
anyway, he was the ~curiousest man about
always betting on anything that turned
up you ever see, if he could only get any
body to bet on the other side, and if he.
couldn't he'd change.sides-any way that
suited the other man suited him anyway
just SOS he got a bet he wss satisfied. But
still he was lueky-uncommon lucky; he
most always come out winner. he was
always ready and laying for q chance /;
there couldn't be no solitary thing men
toned but that fellerd offer to bet on it
and take any side you please as I was
Just telling you; ifthere was q horse race,
you'd find him flush or you'd find him
busted at the end Of it If there
was a cat fight he'd bet on II; if
there was 8 chicken-fght, he bet on it ;
why if there was two birds setting on q
fence, he would bet you which one would
fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting
he would BE thera zes1lantobet on Rarson
Walker, which hejudged to be the best
exhorter about here, and so he was, too,
and a good man /; if he even see a straddlel
bug start to go any where, 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 seen that Smiley and can tell you about
him. Why, it never made no difference
to bim-he would bet on a1ything-the
dangdest Teller. Parson Walkers wife
laid very sick, once, for a good while, and
it seemed as if they warnat going to save
her; but n morning he coms in and
Smiley 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 we'll yet-and
Smiley, before he thought, SAYS, well
I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't
anyway
{ 4hish-yer Smiley had amareAthe bows
called her the ffteen-minute nag, but that
only in fun, you know, because, of
course, she was faster than that-and he
used to win money ON that horse, for al
she was so slow and always had the asth-
ma, or the distemper, or the consumpt-
ion, or something of that kind. They
used to give her two or three hundred
yards start, and then pass her under wsy;
but always at the fag-endof the race she'd
get excited and desperate-like, and come
cavorting and spraddling up, and scatter
ing her legs around timber, sometimes in
the air, and sometimes out to one side
amongst the fences, and kickingup more
dust, and raising more racket with her
coughing and ~sneezing and blowing her
nose-and always fetch up at the stand
just about a neck ahead, as near as You
couldcipher it down.