" Clapp took it
thankfully enough, we may believe.
"Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"--[This was the original title.]
--appeared in the Saturday Press of November 18, 1865, and was
immediately copied and quoted far and near. It brought the name of Mark
Twain across the mountains, bore it up and down the Atlantic coast, and
out over the prairies of the Middle West. Away from the Pacific slope
only a reader here and there had known the name before. Now every one
who took a newspaper was treated to the tale of the wonderful Calaveras
frog, and received a mental impress of the author's signature. The name
Mark Twain became hardly an institution, as yet, but it made a strong bid
for national acceptance.
As for its owner, he had no suspicion of these momentous happenings for a
considerable time. The telegraph did not carry such news in those days,
and it took a good while for the echo of his victory to travel to the
Coast. When at last a lagging word of it did arrive, it would seem to
have brought disappointment, rather than exaltation, to the author. Even
Artemus Ward's opinion of the story had not increased Mark Twain's regard
for it as literature. That it had struck the popular note meant, as he
believed, failure for his more highly regarded work. In a letter written
January 20, 1866, he says these things for himself:
I do not know what to write; my life is so uneventful. I wish I was
back there piloting up and down the river again.
Pages:
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329