It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation of the Liberator, in the spring of 1834, was twenty-three hundred copies, and that this number was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred; in New York, three hundred:  in Boston, two hundred; in other parts of the free States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies for gratuitous distribution.  The colored subscribers to the paper were to the whites as three to one.

There were several suggestions by sundry friends looking to the release of the Liberator from its embarrassments, and, to the relief of its unselfish publishers, from the grinding poverty which its issue imposed upon them.  The most hopeful and feasible of them was the scheme of which Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834:  “I am happy to say,” he pours into her ears, “that it is probable the managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society will determine, to-morrow afternoon, to take all the pecuniary liabilities of the Liberator hereafter, and give me a regular salary for editing it, and friend Knapp a fair price for printing it.  My salary will not be less than $800 per annum, and perhaps it will be fixed at a $1,000....  The new arrangement will go into effect on the 1st of July.”  But alas; the managers took no such action on the morrow, nor went the “new arrangement” into effect at the time anticipated.  The editor was married in September, and two months later the eagerly expected relief was still delayed.  This hope deferred must have caused the young husband meanwhile no little anxiety and heart sickness.

Love in a cottage is very pretty and romantic in novels, but love in a cottage actually thriving on “bread and water,” was a sweet reality in the home of the young couple in Roxbury.  “All the world loves a lover,” says Emerson, but alas! there are exceptions to all rules, and all the world loved not Garrison in his newly found felicity as shall presently appear.

The pledge made by the reformer in the initial number of the Liberator to be “as harsh as truth,” had been kept to the letter.  To some minds there is nothing more difficult to understand and tolerate than is the use of harsh language toward individual wrongdoers.  They appear to be much more solicitous to turn away the wrath of the wicked than to do away with their wickedness.  Multitudes of such minds were offended at the tremendous severities of Garrison’s speech.  They were for peace at any cost, while Garrison was for truth at any cost.  These pro-slavery critics were not necessarily wanting in good feelings to the slaves, or lacking in a sense of the justice of their cause.  But the feelings and the sense were transitive to an abstract object, intransitive to that terrible reality, the American slave.  The indignation of such people exceeded all bounds