In this story by Mark Twain, a man who says he can understand the language of animals relates a tall tale about a misguided but determined blue jay that accidentally drops an acorn into a knothole in the roof of a derelict house. When he looks through the hole and can’t see the acorn, he decides to fill it. The bird’s diligent but futile efforts attract thousands of other jays which stand idly by and, when the truth of the “endless hole” is finally revealed, mock him for his foolishness. Themes include language, folly, obsession, misguided persistence, social behavior.

The humorous frame story of this unlikely tale by Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain) satirizes the way late nineteenth-century American “Easterners” looked down on their supposedly less sophisticated Western compatriots. In the inner story, a man named Jim loves gambling so much that he will bet on almost anything. He finds a frog he believes can leap further than any other in Calaveras County, and learns an expensive lesson when a passing stranger bets against his frog and wins easily. Themes include regional stereotypes, storytelling (tall-tales), gambling consequences (there’s no such thing as a sure bet), trickery and deception.