SOURCE: Introduction to "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," in The American West, No. 4, Fall, 1965, pp. 73-6.

In the following essay, Taylor contends that the significance of Twain's jumping frog story lies in the manner in which Twain elevates a humorous regional tale into a fable that provides insight into universal traits of human nature.

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is one of the most widely acclaimed pieces of Western Americana, and it has now delighted millions of readers all over the world for exactly a century. Such fame is somewhat of a phenomenon considering that Mark Twain at first apparently had in mind no such life span for this humorous "squib," as he called it, which was written to please Artemus Ward. But the Jumping Frog is something more than a burst of superficial funniness. It has, what Mark Twain knew the best humorous...