Visual imagery
The setting: an “old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp”
Simon Wheeler: “fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.”
Andrew Jackson: “his underjaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the furnaces.”
Dan’l Webster: “he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow."
Smiley’s cow: “Smiley had a yeller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only jest a short stump like a bannanner”
Auditory imagery
Dialogue: The regional accents and vernacular colloquialisms bring the story into the oral tradition of tall tales.
The fifteen-minute nag: “raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose”
Andrew Jackson’s rival: "didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off by a circular saw"
Tactile imagery
The anticlimax: “And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and lifted him up and says, ‘Why, blame my cats, if he don't weigh five pound!’ and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot.”
Kinesthetic imagery
On the education of Dan’l Webster:
“He never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut see him turn one summerset, or may be a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a cat."
“quicker'n you could wink, he'd spring straight up, and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again as solid as a gob of mud”
The cheat: “got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a tea-spoon and filled him full of quail shot filled him pretty near up to his chin and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time.”
The contest: "'One two three jump!' and him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders so like a Frenchman, but it wan's no use he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out."
The stranger: “he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulders this way at Dan’l”
