The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

When I first read "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" it didn't really grab my attention, and I found that 3/4s into the story I found that I wasn't paying attention to the story and I had no idea what I just read. So I left it for the night and I reread it the next day and I found that the story was better the second time around. When I read it one sentence jumped out at me on page 273. That sentence was, "Simon Wheeler...reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he turned his initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm...(Clemens 272). I found that sentence quite strange because the whole story seemed like there was a suspense building. When I read the story the second time (I read the dialog parts outloud) I was making different voices for the different characters and I found that I really got into the story. I found it strange that Simon wouldn't have done the same thing.