It was not strange, therefore, that when the fire of twenty years ago seemed to have destroyed everything and to have ruined him and his partners, the quality of the man appeared reflectively in the feeling that was shown towards him by those who see us all without disguise. When the misfortune was supposed to be complete the domestics in his family assembled, apparently by a common feeling, to consider how they could express their sympathy; and as he returned home at evening he was met by one of them whom they had chosen, to tell him that they had all agreed to continue their service at reduced wages, or for no wages at all, until he should recover from the heavy loss. "I stood everything very well up to that time," he said to a friend who tells the story to the Easy Chair, and who had asked him if it were true, "but that broke me down." And the tears were in his eyes as he said it. Of course every one who, during the last forty-five years, has been familiar with this publishing house, knows that the Easy Chair is speaking of Joseph Wesley Harper, the third of the four brothers by whom the house was founded, and who recently died in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was so truly modest, he avoided publicity so unostentatiously, that the Easy Chair almost feels as if it were doing wrong to mention him here with praise; so hard is it to believe that his eyes will not rest upon these lines with all the old kind appreciation. But it is a sermon or a poem which none of us can spare, the life of a man who in very great prosperity kept not only the true heart of a child, but the humble heart that owned no inferior. We are judged usually by our public successes, by the esteem of distinguished persons. But the real test of character is the feeling of those before whom we play no part. What does the nurse in the nursery think of us, or the porter in the store, or the butcher-boy? If a man's children confide in him, if all whom he employs at home or in his business feel that he is full of thought and sympathy for them as for brethren, if those who meet him perceive the charm of his urbanity, and as they draw nearer and know him better, honor and love him more and more, we can be very sure that he has the noblest human qualities, whose influence will be a possession to us forever. Such was the friend whom for so many years in its little labors upon these pages the Easy Chair has constantly seen, and whom it will see no more; and as it meditates, not sadly, but with the sober cheerfulness which his own serene faith in the divine order could not but inspire, upon that good life now peacefully ended, it feels how truly Wesley Harper will always be remembered by those who knew him well. "The wise who soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home." REVIEW OF UNION TROOPS 1865