Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

The individual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it

himself in going is it that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the

shoulder–like that–at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air

deliberate–(L’individu empoche l’argent, s’en va et en s’en allant est-

ce qu’il ne donne pas un coup d pouce par-dessus l’epaule, comme ga, au

pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere):

“Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothin of better than another.”

Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,

until that which at last he said:

“I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.

Is it that she had something? One would believe that she is stuffed.”

He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:

“The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds:”

He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le

malheureux, etc.). When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad.

He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he

not him caught never.

Such is the jumping Frog, to the distorted French eye. I claim that I

never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium

tremens in my life. And what has a poor foreigner like me done, to be

abused and misrepresented like this? When I say, “Well, I don’t see no

pints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog,” is it kind,

is it just, for this Frenchman to try to make it appear that I said, “Eh

bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog”?

I have no heart to write more. I never felt so about anything before.

HARTFORD, March, 1875,

JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE –[Written about 1871.]

The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a

correspondent who posted him as a Radical:– “While he was writing

the first word, the middle, dotting his i’s, crossing his t’s, and

punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was

saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood.”–Exchange.

I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my

health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning

Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on

duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair

with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room

and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers

and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand,

sprinkled with cigar stubs and “old soldiers,” and a stove with a door

hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black

cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and

neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing

collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends

hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and

trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his

locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was

concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the

exchanges and skim through them and write up the “Spirit of the Tennessee

Press,” condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of

interest.

I wrote as follows:

SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a

misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not

the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side.

On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points

along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it.

The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in

making the correction.

John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville

Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city