Why,
I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor--Dan'l Webster
was the name of the frog--and sing out, "Flies, Dan'l, flies!" and
quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake a fly off'n
the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of
mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as
indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any mor'n any frog
might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was,
for all he was so gifted. An' when it come to fair and square jumping on
a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any
animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong
suit, you understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up
money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his
frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been
everywhere, all said he laid over any frog that ever _they_ see.

Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a
stranger in the camp, he was--come across him with his box, and says:

"What might it be that you've got in that box?"

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, "It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, "H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's _he_ good for?"

"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "he's good enough for _one_
thing, I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county."

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look,
and gave it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't
see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

"Maybe you don't," Smiley says. "Maybe you understand frogs, and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amateur, as it were. Anyways, I've got _my_ opinion, and
I'll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras
county."

And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog,
I'd bet you."

And then Smiley says, "That's all right--that's all right--if you'll
hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the f