"rubbing
it in," as we say now. The Enquirer declared that Mark Twain had been
intensely mortified at having been so badly taken in; that his
explanation in the Galaxy was "ingenious, but unfortunately not true."
The Enquirer maintained that The Saturday Review of October 8, 1870, did
contain the article exactly as printed in the "Memoranda," and advised
Mark Twain to admit that he was sold, and say no more about it.

This was enraging. Mark Twain had his own ideas as to how far a joke
might be carried without violence, and this was a good way beyond the
limits. He denounced the Enquirer's statement as a "pitiful, deliberate
falsehood," in his anger falling into the old-time phrasing of newspaper
editorial abuse. He offered to bet them a thousand dollars in cash that
they could not prove their assertions, and asked pointedly, in
conclusion: "Will they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they
send an agent to the Galaxy office? I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must
be edited by children." He promised that if they did not accept his
financial proposition he would expose them in the next issue.

The incident closed there. He was prevented, by illness in his
household, from contributing to the next issue, and the second issue
following was his final "Memoranda" installment. So the matter perished
and was forgotten. It was his last editorial hoax. Perhaps he concluded
that hoaxes in any form were dangerous playthings; they were too likely
to go off at the wrong end.

It was with the April number (1871) that he concluded his relations with
the Galaxy. In a brief valedictory he gave his reasons:

I have now written for the Galaxy a year. For the last eight
months, with hardly an interval, I have had for my fellows and
comrades, night and day, doctors and watchers of the sick! During
these eight months death has taken two members of my home circle and
malignantly threatened two others. All this I have experienced, yet
all the time have been under contract to furnish "humorous" matter,
once a month, for this magazine. I am speaking the exact truth in
the above details. Please to put yourself in my place and
contemplate the grisly grotesqueness of the situation. I think that
some of the "humor" I have written during this period could have
been injected into a funeral sermon without disturbing the solemnity
of the occasion.

The "Memoranda" will cease permanently w