In what ways is "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" a humorous story?

Twain uses three elements classic to comedy to create a humorous story. First, as anyone who has read the Lemony Snickett stories knows, warning a reader from the outset that a story will be too terrible or boring to read is sure to have the opposite effect and catch his or her interest. The narrator in this story declares that he thinks his friend's intention in asking him to ask about Smiley is to bore...

Twain uses three elements classic to comedy to create a humorous story. First, as anyone who has read the Lemony Snickett stories knows, warning a reader from the outset that a story will be too terrible or boring to read is sure to have the opposite effect and catch his or her interest. The narrator in this story declares that he thinks his friend's intention in asking him to ask about Smiley is to bore him "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." Of course, what follows is a story that turns out to be anything but tedious.

Exaggeration is a key to comedy, and Twain uses the device of the tall tale to tell the over-the-top story of a man, Jim Smiley, who would bet on anything. It is hard not to smile at a man willing to bet on which of two birds on a fence will fly off first. Surprise is a third important element of comedic writing and Twain employs this too. After emphasizing how lucky Smiley is in his betting life and singing the praises of his frog, who can outjump any other, the story introduces a trickster, in the form of a stranger, who outsmarts Smiley. When the stranger takes advantage of Smiley's absence to load his frog, Daniel Webster, down with buckshot, surprise enters what we expected to be a predictable tale and the joke is on Smiley.