The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867)

The story that made Twain famous, first printed in the New York Saturday Press in November 1865 as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog." A narrator asks after a stranger and gets trapped by Simon Wheeler, who answers with a long, perfectly solemn yarn about a man who would bet on anything. The joke is in the delivery: Wheeler never cracks a smile, and the frog story itself is only the last turn of a ramble. It takes ten minutes to read and is the best single test of whether Twain's deadpan style is for you.