This story was pretty funny. I love irony and sarcasm, and Twain is a master of both. I mean, I don't know much about frogs but I'm pretty sure that you don't have to teach them to jump. They're pretty good at figuring that out themselves. The character of Simon Wheeler was--interesting. He's not someone with whom I'd like to spend a lot of time, but he's definitely someone to gossip about. I recall the scene where the stranger asks what is in his box. He replies "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it an't—it's only just a frog." What sort of crazy answers a question like that? Come on, Wheeler. And he thinks that every bit of minutia is fascinating. It's not. The story he tells is far-fetched and probably mostly bullshit.
I've been in situations like the narrator: hearing a story you find to be an absolute snooze-fest. You don't wanna be rude about it, but there's not really an etiquette established for telling someone that they're boring. If I were in the narrator's shoes, I think I would have done exactly what he did.
Twain gives very little description of the setting, but it wasn't difficult to imagine the dirty, rundown bar in which they were talking. Or when Smiley stomps around in the swamp looking for a frog for the stranger--which I thought was a very funny scene.
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