The narrator thinks that his friend encouraged him to ask Simon Wheeler about Leonidas W. Smiley to play a joke on him by making him listen to Wheeler tell a long, boring story about a man named Jim Smiley. This is evident from the narrator's suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth and that his friend intended for him to endure a tedious story about Jim Smiley instead.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
by Mark Twain 1865
In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.
Why does the narrator think that his friend encouraged him to ask Simon Wheeler about Leonidas W. Smiley?
to learn where Smiley lives so he can play a joke on him
to learn the difference between Leonidas W. Smiley and Jim Smiley
to hear a fascinating story about Leonidas W. Smiley that Wheeler was hesitant to tell other people
to play a joke on him by making him listen to Wheeler tell a long, boring story about a man Named Jim Smiley
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