“Lowell was indeed very happy in his married life, and amongst the pictures Memory will keep on her tablet for me, till Death passes his sponge over it once for all, is one of his wife lying in a long chair under the trees at Dr. Howe’s, when the sun was getting cool, and laughing with her low, musical laugh at a contest in punning between Lowell and myself, _haud passibus æquis_, but in which he found enough to provoke his wit to activity; her almost Oriental eyes twinkling with fun, half-closed and flashing from one to the other of us; her low, sweet forehead, wide between the temples; mouth wreathing with humor; and the whole frame, lithe and fragile, laughing with her eyes at his extravagant and rollicking word-play. One would hardly have said that she was a beautiful woman, but fascinating she was in the happiest sense of the word, with all the fascination of pure and perfect womanhood and perfect happiness.” CHAPTER IX THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 1857-1861 Lowell had not been a year in his professor’s chair when he was invited to take another position more closely identified with literature and having its own cares and drudgery. Under the present conditions of magazine editorship and of college professorship as well, the union of the two offices would be quite out of the question.[113] But the condition in 1857 was different, and to install a professor in Harvard College as editor of a new magazine was both natural and in a measure traditional. I have already called attention to the effort made in 1853 to establish a literary magazine, and to Lowell’s interest in the venture. The person most concerned in that effort did not lose sight of his project, and now pushed the matter through to a fortunate conclusion. Mr. Francis Henry Underwood was in 1857 the literary adviser and reader for the firm of Phillips & Sampson in Boston, and he was an ardent admirer of Lowell. He was a strong advocate of anti-slavery doctrines, and in his first proposals for a magazine in 1853 was working in conjunction with the firm of John P. Jewett & Co., that had just sprung into notice as publishers of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The firm with which he was now connected was active chiefly in the publication of cheap editions of standard works in literature. It had a large Southern constituency, and when “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was offered to it in the form of a scrap-book of clippings from _The National Era_, commercial prudence dictated a polite refusal. When, however, Mrs. Stowe’s name had become one of great value, it was easy for Phillips, Sampson & Co. to publish, as they did, her “Sunny Memories” in 1854 and “Dred” in 1856.