Amos R. Eno, merchant and banker, was the man who had made New York laugh by building the Fifth Avenue Hotel so far north--away up at Twenty-Third Street--that it was known as Eno’s Folly. This he did nearly ten years before Dana went to the _Sun_, and in 1868 the hotel was not only the most fashionable in the United States, but the most profitable. A. A. Low was a merchant and the father of Seth Low, later mayor of New York. William H. Webb was a big ship-builder. Thomas Murphy was a Republican politician whom Grant made collector of the port of New York, and who gave Grant his place at Long Branch as a summer home. At least three of the men in the list were active in the _Sun_ office. Thomas Hitchcock was a young man of wealth and scholarship who had become acquainted with Dana when both were interested in Swedenborgianism. He wrote, among other books, a catechism of that doctrine. For many years he contributed to the _Sun_, under the name “Matthew Marshall,” financial articles which appeared on Mondays, and which were regarded as the best reviews and criticisms of their kind. Charles S. Weyman got out the _Weekly Sun_, and edited that delightful column, “Sunbeams.” Salem H. Wales was a merchant whose daughter became Mrs. Elihu Root. Dorman B. Eaton was one of the pioneers of civil-service reform. Marshall O. Roberts, F. A. Palmer, David Dows, and E. C. Cowdin were great names in the business and financial world. Why Dana and his friends did not start a new paper is explained in the following letter, written by Dana to General Wilson: Just as we were about commencing our own paper, the purchase of the _Sun_ was proposed to me and accepted. It had a circulation of from fifty to sixty thousand a day, and all among the mechanics and small merchants of this city. We pay a large sum for it--$175,000--but it gives us at once a large and profitable business. If you have a thousand dollars at leisure, you had better invest it in the stock of our company, which is increased to $350,000 in order to pay for the new acquisition. Of this sum about $220,000 is invested in the Tammany Hall real estate, which is sure to be productive, independent of the business of the paper.