ABSTRACT
From May 1870 to April1871, Samuel Clemens wrote a humor column for The Galaxy magazine called "Memoranda. By Mark Twain."2 In July of 1870, the column began with an essay titled "How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Once." In it, the author relates how he once took a job as a substitute editor of a farm newspaper because the pay was good. According to this account, the only issue printed under his editorship exhorted his readers to shake their turnip trees to get the turnips to fall, to set out their corn stalks and buckwheat cakes in July, and to avoid planting pumpkins in the front yard because they are inferior shade trees. When the paper came out, the local farmers were scandalized; one feared he was going insane after reading the editor's columns. As a result, the regular editor of the paper returned from his vacation early to take back control of the paper. He castigated his replacement for knowing nothing about the subject he wrote about: agriculture.
