was precisely the sort of assistant that the young reformer needed at
this juncture in the execution of his purpose; a man like himself
acquainted with poverty, and of unlimited capacity for the endurance of
unlimited hardships. Together they worked out the financial problems
which blocked the way to the publication of the paper. The partners took
an office in Merchants' Hall building, then standing on the corner of
Congress and Water streets, Boston, which gave their joint enterprise a
local habitation. It had already a name. They obtained the use of types
in the printing office of the _Christian Examiner_, situated in the same
building. The foreman, Stephen Foster, through his ardent interest in
Abolition, made the three first numbers of the paper possible. The
publishers paid for the use of the types by working during the day at
the case in the _Examiner's_ office. They got the use of a press from
another foreman with Abolition sympathies, viz., James B. Yerrington,
then the printer of the Boston _Daily Advocate_. Thus were obtained the
four indispensables to the publication of the _Liberator_--types, a
press, an office, and an assistant.

When at length the offspring of such labor and sacrifices made its
appearance in the world, which was on January 1, 1831, it was, in point
of size, insignificant enough. It did not look as if its voice would
ever reach beyond the small dark chamber where it saw the light.
Picture, oh! reader, a wee sheet with four columns to the page,
measuring fourteen inches one way and nine and a quarter the other, and
you will get an idea of the diminutiveness of the _Liberator_ on the day
of its birth. The very paper on which it was printed was procured on
credit. To the ordinary observer it must have seemed such a weakling as
was certain to perish from inanition in the first few months of its
struggle for existence in the world of journalism. It was domiciled
during successive periods in four different rooms of the Merchant's Hall