My attention has just been called to an article
some three years old in a French Magazine entitled, 'Revue des Deux
Mondes' (Review of Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of "Les
Humoristes Americaines" (These Humorist Americans). I am one of these
humorists American dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making.
This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French,
where they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you start
into a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out alive or
not). It is a very good article and the writer says all manner of kind
and complimentary things about me--for which I am sure thank him with all
my heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one
unlucky experiment? What I refer to is this: he says my jumping Frog is
a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse
any one with laughter--and straightway proceeds to translate it into
French in order to prove to his nation that there is nothing so very
extravagantly funny about it. Just there is where my complaint
originates. He has not translated it at all; he has simply mixed it all
up; it is no more like the jumping Frog when he gets through with it than
I am like a meridian of longitude.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29