Often during the long and sorrowful days of the war, as the Easy Chair
wound its slow way to its corner, it heard a quiet greeting, and,
looking up, saw a friend standing aside upon the steps, calm, unhurried,
and the greeting was followed by the significant and challenging
question, "Well?" The tone was tender and tranquil, and conveyed all the
meaning of many words: "Where are we now? What will come of this last
news? How, when, and where will the bitter struggle end?" Then stepping
out upon one of the bridges that connect the tower of the staircase with
the various floors of the huge buildings in which this MAGAZINE is
prepared, the Easy Chair and its friend conversed. There was a singular
sagacity and justice in all that the calm friend said, and the most
truculent opponent of the cause to which his hopes and faith were given
would have heard nothing acrid or exasperating from his lips, even in
the darkest hour of the struggle. As they parted and the Easy Chair
resumed its way, it was with a soothed and cheerful conviction that
whatever might happen to states and nations, nothing could shake the
power of steadfast, manly character.
During the same day or any other, if it chanced to move into some other
part of the buildings, whether in the artists', the engravers', or the
editor's room; in the bindery, the press-rooms, the folding-rooms, the
composing-rooms, or in the counting-room, the Easy Chair encountered
that same friendly, serene presence which had yet its voice of authority
upon occasion, but which seemed to pervade all the rooms like sunshine.
And upon all who met him that friend made the same impression. To every
one, editor, printer, errand-boy, unknown visitor, or distinguished
guest, he was so simply courteous and kind that he controlled without
commanding; and in other days, when he had been the head of the most
turbulent work-room, he had kept the peace without an oath or a blow. It
was the man, not his clothes or his condition, that this man regarded.
It was as natural for him to stop in the street and talk with an old
black woman whom he knew as with the most renowned author whose works he
published. When Oliver Goldsmith lay in his coffin the poor women who
had known him sat weeping upon the stairs of the house. And so when this
true gentleman died, even the old pie-woman who sells cakes and apples
through the buildings left her traffic for a day, and, clad in her sad
best, stood, tearful at his funeral.
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."