The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County E-Book

Mark Twain

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County: Illustrated by Mark Twain. Mark Twain aka Samuel LClemens (1835–1910) was an American author and humorist. Written in 1865, this short story by Mark Twain was an overnight success and reprinted all over the country. In fact, this is the piece of writing that launched Mark Twain into fame. "The Notorious Jumping Frog" focuses on a narrator from the East suffering through a Western man's tall tale about a jumping frog. In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the 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 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."

Leseprobe

Mark Twain

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Illustrated

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Illustrated

by Mark Twain

Illustrated by F. Strothman

"One--two--three--GET!"

THE JUMPING FROG

IN ENGLISH, THEN

CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED

LANGUAGE ONCE MORE BY

PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL.

   Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his best to right himself. My attention has just beep called to an article some three years old in a French Magazine entitled, Review of Some Two Worlds, wherein the writer treats of "These Humorist Americans. I am one of these humorists American dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making.

   This gentleman's article is an able one. It is a very good article and the writer says all manner of kind and complimentary things about me--for which I am sure thank him with all my heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one unlucky experiment? What I refer to is this: he says my jumping Frog is a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse any one with laughter--and straightway proceeds to translate it into French in order to prove to his nation that there is nothing so very extravagantly funny about it. Just there is where my complaint originates. He has not translated it at all; he has simply mixed it all up; it is no more like the jumping Frog when he gets through with it than I am like a meridian of longitude. But my mere assertion is not proof; wherefore I print the French version, that all may see that I do not speak falsely; furthermore, in order that even the unlettered may know my injury and give me their compassion, I have been at infinite pains and trouble to retranslate this French version back into English; and to tell the truth I have well-nigh worn myself out at it, having scarcely rested from my work during five days and nights. I cannot speak the French language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I being self- educated. I ask the reader to run his eye over the original English version of the jumping Frog, and then read the French or my retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the grammar. I think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the French are called a polished nation. If I had a boy that put sentences together as they do, I would polish him to some purpose. Without further introduction, the jumping Frog, as I originally wrote it, was as follows--