It then transpired that there had been a warm discussion in the Committee over the continuance of the arrangement, and Gay and his friends had at last effected a compromise by which the salary of $500 was to be divided between Lowell and Quincy, Lowell being required to contribute every other week only. Lowell accepted the situation philosophically, and doubtless felt some relief. “All through the year,” he wrote to Gay, “I have felt that I worked under a disadvantage. I have missed that inspiration (or call it magnetism) which flows into one from a thoroughly sympathetic audience. Properly speaking, I have never had it as an author, for I have never been popular. But then I have never needed it, because I wrote to please myself and not to please the people: whereas, in writing for the _Standard_, I have felt that I ought in some degree to admit the whole Executive Committee into my workshop, and defer as much as possible to the opinion of persons whose opinion (however valuable on a point of morals) would not probably weigh a pin with me on an æsthetic question. I have felt that I ought to work in my own way, and yet I have also felt that I ought’ to _try_ to work in _their_ way, so that I have failed of working in either. Nevertheless, I think that the Executive Committee would have found it hard to get some two or three of the poems I have furnished from any other quarter.” The entire letter, which is printed by Mr. Norton,[64] is interesting as further defining Lowell’s attitude toward his associates in the anti-slavery cause, and his separation from them on some of the crucial points. But it is clear that the whole situation was complicated for him by the pecuniary embarrassment under which he labored. He was ready, if it would relieve the situation, to release the Committee altogether, but he was willing to write once a fortnight if they _wished_ him to do so. “To tell the truth,” he says, “I need money more this year than last. My father has just resigned a quarter part of his salary,[65] and a large part of the household expenses must devolve upon me. But I have resolved to turn as much of our land as I can into money, and invest it, though I confess I should prefer to leave it as it is, and where I am sure it would be safe for Mab and the rest.” At the end of his second year the engagement was ended, though, largely out of friendship for Gay, Lowell contributed occasionally, and his name indeed was kept at the head of the paper, bracketed with that of Mr. Quincy, for another year. He laughed, by the way, at the designation “corresponding editor.” It has always seemed to me to be nonsense. There can, in the nature of the thing, be no such person as a _corresponding_ editor. Moreover, in this particular case, my unhappy genius will keep seeing the double sense in the word _corresponding_, and suggesting that E. Q. and I correspond in very few particulars,--meaning no offence to either of us. ‘Contributor’ would be the fitting word.”