-it got the government out of the frying-pan.

(1) That is, revolution.

(2) 'In that gracious bygone time when a mild and good-tempered spirit
was the atmosphere of our House, when the manner of our speakers was
studiously formal and academic, and the storms and explosions of to-day
were wholly unknown,' etc.--Translation of the opening remark of a
leading article in this morning's 'Neue Freie Presse,' December 11.

(3) It is the 9th.--M.T.

PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE 'JUMPING FROG' STORY

Five or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story
in our Negro dialect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety
of speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's Negro stories,
and gave her a copy of 'Harper's Monthly' containing it. She translated
it for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author
of it instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good
lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but
for that mistake; for it was shown that Boccaccio had told that very
story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith
took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it.

I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few
weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question:

'Do you know how old your "Jumping Frog" story is?'

And I answered:

'Yes--forty-five years. The thing happened in Calaveras County, in the
spring of 1849.'

'No; it happened earlier--a couple of thousand years earlier; it is a
Greek story.'

I was astonished--and hurt. I said:

'I am willing to be a literary thief if it has been so ordained; I
am even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of
Hopkinson Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think
would be as honest as any one if he could do it without occasioning
remark; but I am not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred
years. I must ask you to knock off part of that.'

But the professor was not chaffing: he was in earnest, and could not
abate a century. He offered to get the book and send it to me and the
Cambridge text-book containing the English translation also. I thought
I would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January
30th he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in
this article. It is my 'Jumping Frog' tale in every essential. It is not
str