Frederick Gleason

It became popular (75,000 copies circulated) and lucrative for Gleason ("an income of $25,000 a year")[4] His expanding publishing enterprise operated out of a series of offices through the years; for some time Gleason's Publishing Hall was located on Tremont Street, in the former Boston Museum building.

[5] In the 1840s Gleason built "Belvidere," a summer home on Bluehill Avenue in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, near Franklin Park; the house was "an elegant mansion ... landscaped with serpentine drives, fountains, and stands of mature trees.

"[6] Pictures of the house appeared in Gleason's Pictorial, along with description: Its great charm is the delightful and extended prospect it affords of the entire harbor of Boston, and the surrounding plain and hills for many miles in extent.

"[10] Gleason sold his share of the Pictorial to Ballou in November 1854, "declaring that he had 'realized an ample competency' and now wished to 'retire from business altogether.

What can Beach and Barnum do against him, who has got all his artists to come together and give him some articles of plate shining resplendently on the banqet of a multiplied newspaper paragraph?

In terms of other investments, starting around 1857, Gleason "got into Wall Street, made $50,000 one week, lost $300,000 the next, and at the time of the crisis found his liabilities amounting to $2 million, with only $500,000 to meet them.