Reading Notes W4: Twain Part A

• The story is basically about a man who goes to a western mining town and speaks with a man named Simon Wheeler in order to ask for someone named Leonidas W. Smiley. The man believed that the name may be a myth, but Wheeler tells a long winded tale about Jim Smiley who would bet on absolutely anything. At the end the man realizes that his friend may have intended him to suffer through Wheeler's tale.
• "he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't he'd change sides." (Mark Twain, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" 206)
• The setting of the story seems like it was set around a small mining town in the mid-1800s and the tale of Wheeler was in about 1849.
• You could tell that it was really satirical, the whole point of the story was to find a maybe made up man but ended up listening to a pointless tale about Jim Smiley.
• The story was pointless, because it was just about a man who would bet on anything then got cheated on the frog jump bet.