"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is a short story by Mark Twain. It was also published as "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog". In it, Twain retells a story he heard from a bartender at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the hopeless gambler Jim Smiley. Twain describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to--to wherever he 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."

The frog of the title, named Daniel Webster, is a California red-legged frog (Rana aurora).

• Upon discovering a copy of this story translated into French, Twain translated it, word-for-word, back into english, keeping the French grammar structure, ending it with a note "thus is my story, to the distorted French eye."

Trivia

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone allude to The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County with the title of episode 19, The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka.

External links

• Online text at the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library] Stephen Ailton's
• Mark Twain in His Times project.