The invitation to the Atlantic Monthly contributors’ dinner, which Clemens here accepted, is not known to survive. Henry O. Houghton (1823–95) had gone into partnership with Edmund H. Bennett (1824–98) in 1852 as H. O. Houghton and Company, the printing firm that operated the Riverside Press, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bennett’s active participation ended in 1855, although he remained a silent partner. In 1864 Melancthon M. Hurd became Houghton’s active partner in the printing company and also in a publishing house, Hurd and Houghton, in New York. By 1872 Houghton’s older brother, Albert, had joined him and Hurd as majority partners in the latter firm, with Horace E. Scudder (1838–1902) and George H. Mifflin (1845–1921) as minority partners and Bennett as a silent minority partner. In late 1873 Hurd and Houghton purchased the Atlantic Monthly for $20,000 from James R. Osgood and Company, of Boston, acquired Every Saturday from Osgood at no cost, and became the publishers and printers (through the Riverside Press) of both magazines (Ballou, 3, 4, 6, 10, 28–30, 32, 38–57, 96–97, 129–31, 136, 163, 202–3, 406).