“They are not mine, they are Jim’s,” he said, once; “but I never could get them to sound like Jim—­they were never as good as his.”

It was early in December, 1864, when Mark Twain arrived at the humble retreat, built of logs under a great live-oak tree, and surrounded by a stretch of blue-grass.  A younger Gillis boy was there at the time, and also, of course, Dick Stoker and his cat, Tom Quartz, which every reader of “Roughing It” knows.

It was the rainy season, but on pleasant days they all went pocket-mining, and, in January, Mark Twain, Gillis, and Stoker crossed over into Calaveras County and began work near Angel’s Camp, a place well known to readers of Bret Harte.  They put up at a poor hotel in Angel’s, and on good days worked pretty faithfully.  But it was generally raining, and the food was poor.

In his note-book, still preserved, Mark Twain wrote:  “January 27 (1865).  —­Same old diet—­same old weather—­went out to the pocket-claim—­had to rush back.”

So they spent a good deal of their time around the rusty stove in the dilapidated tavern at Angel’s Camp.  It seemed a profitless thing to do, but few experiences were profitless to Mark Twain, and certainly this one was not.

At this barren mining hotel there happened to be a former Illinois River pilot named Ben Coon, a solemn, sleepy person, who dozed by the stove or told slow, pointless stories to any one who would listen.  Not many would stay to hear him, but Jim Gillis and Mark Twain found him a delight.  They would let him wander on in his dull way for hours, and saw a vast humor in a man to whom all tales, however trivial or absurd, were serious history.

At last, one dreary afternoon, he told them about a frog—­a frog that had belonged to a man named Coleman, who had trained it to jump, and how the trained frog had failed to win a wager because the owner of the rival frog had slyly loaded the trained jumper with shot.  It was not a new story in the camps, but Ben Coon made a long tale of it, and it happened that neither Clemens nor Gillis had heard it before.  They thought it amusing, and his solemn way of telling it still more so.

“I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s better than any other frog,” became a catch phrase among the mining partners; and, “I ’ain’t got no frog, but if I had a frog, I’d bet you.”

Out on the claim, Clemens, watching Gillis and Stoker anxiously washing, would say, “I don’t see no pints about that pan o’ dirt that’s any better than any other pan o’ dirt.”  And so they kept the tale going.  In his note-book Mark Twain made a brief memorandum of the story for possible use.

The mining was rather hopeless work.  The constant and heavy rains were disheartening.  Clemens hated it, and even when, one afternoon, traces of a pocket began to appear, he rebelled as the usual chill downpour set in.

“Jim,” he said, “let’s go home; we’ll freeze here.”