The new establishment of Harper & Brothers is one of the wonders of the great city in which it is located.  The buildings are of iron and brick, and cover half an acre of ground.  The establishment really consists of two buildings.  The front building faces Franklin Square, and is a magnificent iron structure, painted white.  Behind this is the second building, which fronts on Cliff Street.  A court-yard intervenes between them, spanned by several bridges, connecting them.  Each building is seven stories in height, and completely fire-proof.

There are no openings in the floors for communication, but the various floors are connected by circular stairways of iron, placed outside the building.  The front building, or that which faces Franklin Square, is used for storerooms, salesrooms, and the editorial and business offices of the establishment.  In the rear building the various branches of the book manufacture are carried on.  The author’s manuscript is received here and sent back to him a complete book.  Every portion of the work is done under the same roof, and it is well done.  The building is filled with the most costly and complete machinery for saving time and labor.  Besides the machinery used in other departments, it contains in its press-room forty-three Adams presses for book work, and five cylinder presses for printing the “Weekly” and the “Bazaar.”  About 600 persons, 250 of whom are females, are employed in the establishment; and it is to the credit of both employers and employes that but few changes occur in this force.  Many of the employes have been with the firm since its first entrance into business.  The old man in charge of the vaults—­a curiosity in his way—­has been in the service of the house for fifty years, and to leave it now would, doubtless, break his heart; for none of the Harpers are as proud of their reputation as he is.  The most perfect system reigns throughout every department, and every thing goes on promptly and in its proper place.

“Of course,” says a writer who many years has witnessed the operations of the house, “the development and organization of such a business were due not to one brother alone, but to the cooperation of all....  The business was to James, as to the others, the great central interest, but prosperity could not relax his steady character.  He did not forget his early faith, nor the counsels and the habits of his Long Island home.  He remained strictly a ‘temperance man,’ and his marvelous physical vigor was claimed by the temperance advocates as that of a cold-water mans He was long an official member of John-Street Church, and when he left his house in Rose Street, and went to live in the upper part of the city, he joined the congregation of St. Paul’s Church, in the Fourth Avenue.  But with all his fidelity to his ancestral faith, he cherished the largest charity, and by much experience of the world had learned to agree with his favorite apostle, James, that pure