The Complete Satires & Essays of Mark Twain. Марк Твен
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in a flash of the eye Daniel had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know.
To jump plain — this was his strong. When he himself agitated for that Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him remained a red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he of it was right, for some men who were traveled, who had all seen, said that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog. Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried by times to the village for some bet.
One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and him said:
“What is this that you have then shut up there within?”
Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
“That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is nothing of such, it not is but a frog.”
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side and from the other, then he said:
“Tiens! in effect! — At what is she good?”
“My God!” respond Smiley, always with an air disengaged, “she is good for one thing, to my notice (à mon avis), she can batter in jumping (elle pent batter en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.”
The individual re-took the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
“Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog.” (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qi’aucune grenouille.) If that isn’t grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no judge. M. T.
“Possible that you not it saw not,” said Smiley, “possible that you you comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing; possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but an amateur. Of all manner (De toute manière) I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras.”
The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:
“I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had one, I would embrace the bet.”
“Strong, well!” respond Smiley; “nothing of more facility. If you will hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j’irai vous chercher).
Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box, who puts his forty dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attend). He attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him puts by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp. Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and said:
“Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet upon the same line, and I give the signal” — then he added: “One, two, three — advance!”
Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the shoulders thus, like a Frenchman — to what good? he could not budge, he is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him had put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not himself doubted not of the turn being intended (mais i! ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendu). The individual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it himself in going is 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 de pouce par-dessus l’épaule, comme ça, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air delibere.)
“Eh bein! I no see not that that frog has nothing 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 the individual, but he not him caught never.
It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but I am not acquainted with them.
So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, an incident which has this unique feature about it that it is both old and new, a “chestnut” and not a “chestnut”; for it was original when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it happened in California in our own time.
FENIMORE COOPER’S LITERARY OFFENCES
“The Pathfinder” and “The Deerslayer” stand at the head of Cooper’s novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole. The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art.
— Professor Lounsbury
The five tales reveal an extraordinary fullness of invention. … One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo… The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of the forest were familiar to Cooper from his youth up.
— Professor Matthews
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction in America.
— Wilkie Collins
It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature at Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper’s literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in “Deerslayer,” and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty-two. In “Deerslayer,” Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the “Deerslayer” tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.
2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the “Deerslayer” tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.
3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.
4. They require that the personages in a tale,