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Here were workshop and home in one.1 ‘The Publishers of the Liberator,’ as they announced in their first2 issue, ‘have formed their copartnership with a determination to print the paper as long as they can subsist upon bread and water, or their hands obtain employment.
The friends of the cause may therefore take courage; its enemies—may surrender at discretion.’
The 3 partners lived, in fact, ‘chiefly upon bread and milk, a few cakes, and a little fruit, obtained from a baker's shop opposite and a petty cake and fruit shop in the basement,’ and ‘were sometimes on “short commons,” even at that.’4 But they had meat to eat the world knew not of. ‘Many a time in visiting their office,’ Mr. Johnson5 again bears witness, ‘did I find them partaking of their humble repast, which they seasoned with laughter, song and cheerful talk.
A friendly cat cheered their loneliness and protected them from the depredations of mice.
Mr.6 Garrison was fond of his feline companion, and I remember seeing her more than once mounted upon his writing-table, and caressing his bald forehead in a most affectionate way, while he was spinning editorial yarn.’
How little time there was for such spinning, and why in this first volume editorial promises went so often unfulfilled, appears in Mr. Garrison's letter to his ‘beloved friend,’ Samuel J. May, under date of February 14, 1831:
1 Another witness, the Rev. James C. White, of Cincinnati, under date of Nov. 4, 1879, writes: ‘I was often at the office of the Liberator. . . . I knew of his [Mr. Garrison's] self-denials. I knew he slept in the office with a table for a bed, a book for a pillow, and a self-prepared scanty meal for his rations in the office, while he set up his articles in the Liberator with his own hand, and without previous committal to paper.’
3 Ms. Mar. 1, 1874, W. L. G. to O. Johnson.
4 ‘I believe we thus lived for at least a year and a half’ (Ms. Mar. 1, 1874, W. L. G. to O. Johnson).
5 N. Y. Tribune, May 26, 1879.
6 Cf. ante, p. 30.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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