Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/182

 178 reason I am glad to greet the ancient thistles that alone remain defiant and unchanged.

American publishers, however, are as delighted to offer their readers a new cover as a new story, and it is occasionally interesting to follow a magazine through all its outer vicissitudes. There was a time when Saint Nicholas behaved like Harlequin in the pantomime, slipping into fresh costumes with bewildering alertness and rapidity. The Century has adopted a plan eminently fitted to confuse and distress people who are in love with the familiar, and who have barely time to accustom themselves to one of the picturesque young women on its cover, before they are confronted with another. The only engaging and comforting thing about these rival damsels is their strong family resemblance. They are like the fair daughters of Doris, with faces "neither the same nor different, but as those of sisters should be." The wanton alterations in Harper's Magazine are none the less heartbreaking for being so trivial. As well rob us of an old friend altogether as tamper with his