THE "JUMPING FROG."
EVEN a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his best to right himself. 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 Americanes" (These Humourists Americans). I am one of these humourists Americans 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 I 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 Jump-
