ung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there.

To me this is very curious and interesting. Curious for several reasons.
For instance:

I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as
a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would
remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant; he had no gift as a
story-teller, and no invention; in his mouth this episode was merely
history--history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history,
too; he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were
austere facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts;
he was drawing on his memory, not his mind; he saw no humour in his
tale, neither did his listeners; neither he nor they ever smiled or
laughed; in my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him
and to his fellow gold-miners there were just two things in the story
that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim
Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was
Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature--for he knew (as the narrator
asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is
already ready to eat it. Those men discussed those two points, and those
only. They were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the
party was aware that a first-rate story had been told in a first-rate
way, and that it brimful of a quality whose presence they never
suspected--humour.

Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in
Angel's Camp in the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that day in the
fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its
duplicate happened in Boeotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it
must be a case of history actually repeating itself, and not a case of
a good story floating down the ages and surviving because too good to be
allowed to perish.

I would now like to have the reader examine the Greek story and the
story told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly
alike they are in essentials.

(Translation.)

THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.(1)

An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the
road-side looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian
said his was a remarkable frog, and asked if he would agree to start a
contest of frogs, on condition that he whose frog jumped farthest should
receive a large