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 $8000 per annum, and perhaps it will be fixed at a $i,000. . . . The new arrangement will go into effect on the ist 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.
