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May discusses certain subscription payments he made on Estlin's behalf before giving an account of the case against Edward Sayres and Daniel Drayton and the escaped slaves of the schooner, "Pearl." May writes at length on Senator John P. Hale, Zachary Taylor, the Liberty Party, Martin Van Buren, the "Conscience Whigs," and the "Barnburners." He describes his own affairs in Leicester before reporting that Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman plans to go to Europe for two to three years. May informs Estlin that William Lloyd Garrison intends to take the cold water treatment for erysipelas and that the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the yearly New England Anti-Slavery Convention were both very successful. He says that Dr. Lowell urged a study of the history of slavery at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers. May mentions the unexpected and tragic death of his father-in-law, Nathaniel P. Russell, who drowned at sea. He tells of the Spiridone Gambardella portrait of William Ellery Channing and refers to the increased postal rates due to the establishment of a foreign postage tax. May also tells of the failure of Howitt's Journal, laments Estlin's displeasure in reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline," and touches on the poetry in "The Liberator" which he has endeavored to improve.