SOURCE: "Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story," in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays, Harper & Brothers, 1897, pp. 149-63.

In the following essay, originally published in the North American Review in 1894, Twain compares his story to a similar frog story that a scholar had claimed was of ancient Greek origins. In doing so, Twain reveals something of his attitude toward the narrator from whom he first heard the story. He then goes on to "retranslate " in humorous manner a bad French version of the story back into English.

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...