Part A In “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” what does the narrator observe about Simon Wheeler?

A. Wheeler is pompous and stuffy.
B. Wheeler is critical of others.
C. Wheeler is dull but earnest.
D. Wheeler is utterly foolish.
Part B
Which of these quotations from “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” best illustrates the answer to Part A?

A. [H]e would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me.
B. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the barroom stove of the dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and baldheaded, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.
C. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned his initial sentence.…
D. [A]ll through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter.…