The prospectus of _Putnam’s Monthly_, in which the fact that it was to be “an entirely original work” was emphasized, announced that it was “intended to combine the more various and amusing characteristics of a popular magazine with the higher and graver qualities of a quarterly review,” and that when a subject needed illustrations or pictorial examples, such illustrations would occasionally be given. The rate of payment was fair for the time: poetry had no fixed rates, but Lowell received fifty dollars for a poem of two hundred and fifty lines or so, and prose was paid at the rate of three dollars a page. Hawthorne and Emerson were among those who promised their work, though neither seems to have contributed, but Longfellow printed several poems. The articles and poems were all unsigned. The early numbers gave good promise, and Curtis, with his “Prue and I” papers gave a distinction of lightness and added the flavor which every literary magazine covets but can rarely command. The first number, Briggs declared with elation, had run up to twenty thousand copies, and the second number had one of those articles, “Have we a Bourbon among us?” which are the joy of the magazine editor for the buzz which they create in the reading community. But the high hopes with which _Putnam’s_ started out somehow faded. There were exceptionally good poems and the general average of writing was high, but the magazine soon satisfied curiosity without creating a demand, and the financial embarrassment of the publisher after two years compelled a transfer of the publishing interest which was followed by a steady decline in quality. Meanwhile, Mr. Briggs looked eagerly to Lowell for help, and for his first number received the poem “The Fountain of Youth,” which had been lying in the poet’s portfolio for three years. He suggested that Lowell should publish “The Nooning” as a serial. This was not to be, but whether from this suggestion or not, Lowell suddenly took it into his head to start a serio-comic poem in Alexandrines, under the heading “Our Own, his Wanderings and Personal Adventures,” in which he intended to personate a correspondent of the magazine, who should travel in Europe, and employ his nonsense and satire on men and things. He began leisurely enough, heading his page with a Greek, a Latin, and an English motto, each cleverly hinting at the plan and the name of the piece. The Latin “_Quæ regio in terris Nostri non plena laboris?_” was Englished in “Full many cities he hath seen and many great men known; What place on earth but testifies the labors of _our own_?”