At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me and recommenced:

“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn’t have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner, and—”

“Oh, hang Smiley and his afflicted cow!” I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, is America’s greatest humorous writer. Like Walt Whitman he was of humble parentage. He was born in the village of Florida, Missouri, and at the age of four years, moved with his parents to the river town of Hannibal, which he immortalized in his two most popular books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He became a printer and later a pilot on a Mississippi steamboat. For a few years he served as assistant to his brother who was secretary of the Territory of Nevada. This brought him in touch with the gold fields of the West, and he set out to make his fortune in a mining camp. He found only a very small amount of gold, but his wonderful experiences in the West furnish the basis of some of his most popular stories and books, such as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog” and Roughing It. As a newspaper reporter he chose the pen name Mark Twain, an old river expression, meaning the mark that registers two (twain) fathoms (twelve feet) of water. His start to literary fame came with the publication of the story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog.” Later he traveled through Europe and the Holy Land, paying his expenses by means of a series of letters describing his trip, written for a San Francisco newspaper. These letters were afterward collected in a book called The Innocents Abroad, a delightfully humorous collection of descriptive sketches. For a time he was part owner and associate editor of the Buffalo Express, but the investment was not profitable and he spent much of his time on the lecture platform. He died at Redding, Connecticut, in his seventy-fifth year.

Discussion. 1. What paragraphs in this selection relate the circumstances under which Simon Wheeler’s reminiscences of Jim Smiley were told? 2. What were these circumstances? 3. Are all parts of these introductory paragraphs to be taken seriously? 4. Does Mark Twain intend to convince his readers that they will find Simon Wheeler’s narrative “monotonous” and “interminable”? 5. Why does he call it so? 6. What paragraphs in these reminiscences lead up to the story of the jumping frog? 7. In whom do these paragraphs serve to interest the reader? 8. What is this person’s most marked characteristic? 9. What illustrations of this characteristic are given? 10. Did you enjoy reading this selection? 11. Can you tell what made it enjoyable? 12. Pronounce the following: infamous; inquiries; exquisitely; fellow; amateur.

Phrases

[THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS]