nd
fashion of its telling seemed to him of too simple and mild a variety in
that day of boisterous incident and exaggerated form. By and by Artemus
Ward turned up in San Francisco, and one night Mark Twain told him his
experiences with Jim Gillis, and in Angel's Camp; also of Ben Coon and
his tale of the Calaveras frog. Ward was delighted.

"Write it," he said. "There is still time to get it into my volume of
sketches. Send it to Carleton, my publisher in New York."--[This is in
accordance with Mr. Clemens's recollection of the matter. The author can
find no positive evidence that Ward was on the Pacific coast again in
1865. It seems likely, therefore, that the telling of the frog story and
his approval of it were accomplished by exchange of letters.]--Clemens
promised to do this, but delayed fulfilment somewhat, and by the time
the sketch reached Carleton, Ward's book was about ready for the press.
It did not seem worth while to Carleton to make any change of plans
that would include the frog story. The publisher handed it over to Henry
Clapp, editor of the Saturday Press, a perishing sheet, saying: "Here,
Clapp, here's something you can use in your paper." 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