Excerpt from Jim Smily and His Jumping Frog
Mark Twain
Well, I called on good natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and I inquired after your friend Leonidas W. Smity, as you
requested me to do, and I hereunto append the result. If you can get any information out of it you are cordially welcome to it
I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smily is a myth-that you never knew such a personage, and that you only
conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smily, and he would go to work
and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me if that
was your design, Mr. Ward, it will gratify you to know that it succeeded.
What can the reader conclude about the story that Simon Wheeler is going to tell the narrator?
:50
The story will be long and tedious
Smily thinks the story is ridiculous
The story will be short and succinct
D)
The narrator thinks the story is serious