This story is a frame story. Is the rhetorical situation the same for both parts of the frame? Explain your answer

Not really. The difference between the educated easterner and the down-and-out miner in California indicate distinctly different "rhetorical situations," and certainly the rhetoric used by both characters is very different. The easterner's diction is elevated--"In compliance with the request," "garrulous," " I hereunto append," "a myth," "such a personage," "conjectured," "infamous," "exasperating reminiscence," "dilapidated," "tranquil countenance," "cherished companion." Obviously, Simon Wheeler is the opposite. The easterner's situation is simply non-fictional realism, while Wheeler's story and frame seem to border on the fictional and fantastic (perhaps "mythic").