And here is the way it happened in California: 

From ‘the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras county’

Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, and all of them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you.  He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal’lated to educate him; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump.  And you bet you he did learn him, too.  He’d give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you’d see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut—­see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat.  He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep’him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him.  Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do ’most anything—­and I believe him.  Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster down here on this flor—­Dan’l Webster was the name of the frog—­and sing out, ‘Flies, Dan’l, flies!’ and quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up and snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag’in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been doin’ any more’n any frog might do.  You never see a frog so modest and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was so gifted.  And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.  Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.  Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kep’ the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet.  One day a feller—­a stranger in the camp, he was—­come acrost him with his box, and says: 

‘What might it be that you’ve got in the box?’

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, ’It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it’s ain’t—­it’s only just a frog.’

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, ’H’m—­so ‘tis.  Well, what’s he good for?’

‘Well,’ Smiley says, easy and careless, ’he’s good enough for one thing, I should judge—­he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.’

The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, ‘Well,’ he says, ’I don’t see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.’