Mr. Moses Dresser Phillips had been brought up in the book trade and knew it first as a bookseller. He was a man who had large business energy and laid his plans for wide connections and not merely a local trade. Mr. Charles Sampson, with whom he had formed his partnership, had died about five years before, and his only partner at this time was Mr. William Lee, well known for many years as the senior partner in the publishing house of Lee & Shepard. He was nearer Mr. Underwood’s age and it was chiefly with him that Mr. Underwood talked over his cherished plan. It was through him, indeed, that Mr. Underwood expected to gain over Mr. Phillips, who had the practical man’s distrust of new enterprises suggested by authors, and a temperament which was calculated to chill enthusiasm. Mr. Underwood had already won consent to engage in the work from Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and others, and he represented strongly to Mr. Lee the possibilities of a magazine which should have at once a staff of writers of a character so eminent. I suspect he kept in the background any purpose he might have of making the magazine play a part in politics. Mr. Lee in turn at his daily lunch with Mr. Phillips kept that gentleman in mind of the project, though he was himself neither an advocate nor an opponent. He simply used Mr. Underwood’s arguments, the most effective of which may have been the prospect held up before Mr. Phillips of the association he should thus form with a distinguished group. Mr. Phillips having been won over, the plans for the new magazine were rapidly pushed forward. In all this Mr. Underwood was the active manager, but Mr. Phillips as the head of the business now took the leading place. At an early date, Tuesday, 5 May, 1857, he called together the men on whom he most relied to give the enterprise distinction, and gave them a dinner at the Parker House. Fortunately an account of this meeting is in his own words in a letter to a niece:--