even his fond hopes!

As its first depository, it shared the office room of its agent. From
time to time it was forced to move to larger quarters, until the year
1853, when it located permanently, in its well-known building, The
Bible House, on Astor Place, New York city. This edifice is of brick,
six stories high, and occupies a solid block. In its first year, the
society received $37,779, and issued 6,410 volumes; in its seventieth
year (1886) its receipts were $523,910, and it issued 1,437,440
volumes. In the Bible House, the working force--manufacturing and
executive--numbers about 250. The auxiliaries which directly and
indirectly center in this society, number about 7,000.

From this great tree and its many branches, the leaves have been sent
for the healing of nations. There are now but few countries where
there are any impediments to the free circulation of the Scriptures.
In our own land the society has afforded relief to its feeble
auxiliaries, has supplied destitute Sabbath-schools, has endeavored
to place the Bible in the common schools, to distribute it among
soldiers and seamen, to furnish hotels, steamboats, railroads, and
humane and criminal institutions. By it, the Bible has been
circulated among immigrants, the destitute poor, the freedmen, the
Chinese, and (in the Douay version) among Romanists. At four
different periods the society has made exploration among the states
and territories, to search and supply the destitute. Proportionately
the number of families without the word of God is much smaller now
than when the society was organized, notwithstanding the enormous
growths in population.

The society has attempted to send the Bible to all the inhabitants of
the earth, accessible to its agents. It has established depots in
almost every place where the American churches have missions. It
circulates the Scriptures in more than eighty different languages and
dialects. In 1856, in compliance with a special request, and by means
of a special gift, the Society's Imperial Quarto English Bible, bound
with extraordinary care, enclosed in a rosewood case, and accompanied
by a courteous letter, was sent to each of the reigning monarchs and
other chief magistrates of the world.

Before the art of printing, the Bible was the most expensive book in
the world. So late as the American Revolution, in its cheapest
edition a volume could not be purchased for less than two dollars.
This society now furnishes a co