The celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County :: :: University of Virginia Library

OUR esteemed friend, Mr. John William
Skae, of Virginia City, walked into
the office where we are sub-editor at
a late hour last night, with an expression of
profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance,
and, sighing heavily, laid the following
item reverently upon the desk, and walked
slowly out again. He paused a moment at the
door, and seemed struggling to command his
feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak, and
then, nodding his head toward his manuscript,
ejaculated in a broken voice, “Friend of mine
—oh! how sad!” and burst into tears. We were
so moved at his distress that we did not think
to call him back and endeavor to comfort him
until he was gone and it was too late. The
paper had already gone to press, but knowing
that our friend would consider the publication

111

of this item important, and cherishing the hope
that to print it would afford a melancholy satisfaction
to his sorrowing heart, we stopped the
press at once and inserted it in our columns:

Distressing Accident.—Last evening about 6 o'clock, as
Mr. William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South
Park, was leaving his residence to go down town, as has been
his usual custom for many years, with the exception only of a
short interval in the spring of 1850, during which he was confined
to his bed by injuries received in attempting to stop a runaway
horse by thoughtlessly placing himself directly in its wake
and throwing up his hands and shouting, which, if he had done
so even a single moment sooner, must inevitably have frightened
the animal still more instead of checking its speed, although
disastrous enough to himself as it was, and rendered more melancholy
and distressing by reason of the presence of his wife's
mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence, notwithstanding
it is at least likely, though not necessarily so, that she
should be reconnoitering in another direction when incidents
occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a general
thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to have
stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious
resurrection, upwards of three years ago, aged 86, being a
Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in
consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every blasted
thing she had in the world. But such is life. Let us all take
warning by this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct
ourselves that when we come to die we can do it. Let us
place our hands upon our hearts, and say with earnestness and
sincerity that from this day forth we will beware of the intoxicating
bowl.—First Edition of the Californian.

The boss-editor has been in here raising the
very mischief, and tearing his hair and kicking

112

the furniture about, and abusing me like a
pickpocket. He says that every time he leaves
me in charge of the paper for half an hour, I
get imposed upon by the first infant or the first
idiot that comes along. And he says that distressing
item of Johnny Skae's is nothing but
a lot of distressing bosh, and has got no point
to it and no sense in it and no information in it,
and that there was no earthly necessity for stopping
the press to publish it. He says every
man he meets has insinuated that somebody
about The Californian office has gone crazy.

Now all this comes of being good-hearted. If
I had been as unaccommodating and unsympathetic
as some people, I would have told Johnny
Skae that I wouldn't receive his communication
at such a late hour, and to go to blazes
with it; but no, his snuffling distress touched
my heart, and I jumped at the chance of doing
something to modify his misery. I never read
his item to see whether there was any thing
wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few lines
which preceded it, and sent it to the printers.
And what has my kindness done for me? It
has done nothing but bring down upon me a
storm of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.

113

Now, I will just read that item myself, and
see if there is any foundation for all this fuss.
And if there is, the author of it shall hear
from me.

I have read it, and I am bound to admit that
it seems a little mixed at a first glance. However,
I will peruse it once more.

I have read it again, and it does really seem
a good deal more mixed than ever.

I have read it over five times, but if I can get
at the meaning of it, I wish I may get my just
deserts. It won't bear analysis. There are
things about it which I can not understand at all.
It don't say whatever became of William Schuyler.
It just says enough about him to get one
interested in his career, and then drops him.
Who is William Schuyler, any how, and what
part of South Park did he live in, and if he
started down-town at six o'clock, did he ever
get there, and if he did, did any thing happen
to him? Is he the individual that met with the

114

“distressing accident”? Considering the elaborate
circumstantiality of detail observable in
the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain
more information than it does. On the contrary,
it is obscure—and not only obscure, but
utterly incomprehensible. Was the breaking
of Mr. Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the
“distressing accident” that plunged Mr. Skae
into unspeakable grief, and caused him to come
up here at dead of night and stop our press to
acquaint the world with the unfortunate circumstance?
Or did the “distressing accident”
consist in the destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's
property in early times? Or did it consist
in the death of that person herself three
years ago? (albeit it does not appear that she
died by accident.) In a word, what did that
“distressing accident” consist in? What did
that driveling ass of a Schuyler stand in the
wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting
and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him?
And how the mischief could he get run over by
a horse that had already passed beyond him?
And what are we to “take warning” by? and
how is this extraordinary chapter of incomprehensibilities
going to be a “lesson” to us? And

115

above all, what has the “intoxicating bowl”
got to do with it, any how? It is not stated that
Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that
his mother-in-law drank, or that the horse
drank—wherefore, then, the reference to the
intoxicating bowl? It does seem to me that,
if Mr. Skae had let the intoxicating bowl alone
himself, he never would have got into so much
trouble about this infernal imaginary distressing
accident. I have read his absurd item over
and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility,
until my head swims; but I can make
neither head nor tail of it. There certainly
seems to have been an accident of some kind or
other, but it is impossible to determine what
the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by
it. I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled
to request that the next time any thing happens
to one of Mr. Skae's friends, he will append
such explanatory notes to his account of it as
will enable me to find out what sort of an accident
it was and whom it happened to. I had
rather all his friends should die than that I
should be driven to the verge of lunacy again
in trying to cipher out the meaning of another
such production as the above.