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American Literature / Unit 11   AML 1007 short lesson, about 20 seconds

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"

Captions available

The idea

A polite eastern narrator asks after Leonidas Smiley and is trapped by an old miner who tells him instead about Jim Smiley, a compulsive better whose champion frog loses when a stranger fills it with quail shot.

In practice

A frog, and a pocketful of shot.

Where people slip

A refined voice, trapped by a vernacular one.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

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