Student Question
Why did the narrator's friend suggest asking Wheeler about Leonidas Smiley?
Quick answer:
The narrator's friend suggested asking Wheeler about Leonidas Smiley as a practical joke. The narrator's friend likely knew Wheeler would bore the narrator with long, irrelevant stories, such as the tale of Jim Smiley and his jumping frog. The narrator suspected that his friend wanted to subject him to Wheeler's tedious storytelling, which turned out to be true.
According to the opening paragraph, the narrator's friend simply wanted to have some contact with his friend's friend Leonidas W. Smiley. The narrator's friend wrote him "from the East." In those days communication between the American East and West would have been slow and uncertain. The narrator's friend says in his letter that he thinks Simon Wheeler might know something about the whereabouts of Smiley. But the narrator says he suspects that his friend in the East was playing a practical joke on him. The friend wanted the narrator to meet Wheeler, who was a terrible bore and would never stop talking about Smiley and anything else that came into his mind. When the narrator finds Wheeler, he hears the story about Smiley's jumping frog--but he never does find out anything about the whereabouts of Leonidas W. Smiley.
I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make...
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some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me any thing about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.
This succinctly explains the narrator's original purpose, but, as he later reflects, he thinks his friend in the East was playing a practical joke on him by getting him involved with an old man who would bore him "nearly to death." The story of the jumping frog not only characterizes Leonidas W. Smiley--or at least somebody whose last name was Smiley--but it also characterizes the garrulous Simon Wheeler. The most interesting aspect of Mark Twain's story is his recreation of Simon Wheeler's colorful use of the English language. Wheeler shows his garrulous nature and his quaint speech as soon as he starts talking:
There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49 or maybe it was the spring of '50 I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn't finished when he first came to the camp; but anyway, he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get any body to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides
Why did the narrator's friend suggest asking Wheeler about Leonidas Smiley?
In the introduction to the story written in the form of a letter to an acquaintance, a Mr. A. Ward, Mark Twain clearly expresses his suspicion that Mr. Ward has set him up for a prank. He declares:
...I have a lurking suspicion that your Leonidas W. Smiley 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 Smiley, 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.
Twain suggests that Leonidas W. Smiley, supposedly a young minister who lived in the town of Boomerang, did not exist and that Mr. Ward deliberately referred him to "old Wheeler," who would, obviously, not know who he was talking about. Wheeler, however, a man who seemingly loves telling a story, was encouraged by Twain's visit and told him a lengthy, monotonous tale about someone he did know--a Mr. Jim Smiley.
Twain claims that his written rendition is a replica of the story exactly as Mr. Wheeler told it. The narrative is clearly bland and long-winded, which adds to the humor. Twain patiently sat through the whole tale as an act of kindness to the narrator. He did not once interrupt Mr. Wheeler and it seems as if the speaker so relished hearing his own voice that he did not stop either.
The interruption at what seems to have been only the middle, or somewhere thereabouts, of this exhausting tale, seems to have been a blessing. Mr. Wheeler was called away and Twain decided to leave for the reason given below. He states to Mr. Ward:
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away.
However, he was accosted by the returning Mr. Wheeler, who seemed determined to continue his narrative about the remarkably obsessive gambler. Twain, though, had had enough and recorded the following response:
"O, curse Smiley and his afflicted cow!" I muttered, good-naturedly, and bidding the old gentleman good-day, I departed.
As he states in his introduction, it seems that the prank worked and he appears to have been quite annoyed by the whole affair.
Mark Twain writes with a humorous tone throughout his short story "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The narrator suggests that his friend ask Wheeler about Leonidas Smiley for the same reason...to be funny. The narrator's friend is setting him up because he knows what the outcome will be. There is no such person as Leonidas Smiley. When asked about him, Wheeler is reminded of Jim Smiley and begins to tell the narrator the story of the gambling Jim Smiley. The narrator is literally cornered by Wheeler unable to escape the rambling story until Wheeler is interrupted. The narrator is finally "free" realizing that his friend has successfully gotten the best of him.