Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/183

 Rh integrity. No one can claim for Harper that its time-honored cover has any rare artistic quality, any of that subtle and far-reaching suggestiveness that we prize so wearily to-day. On the contrary, its little boys scattering roses into nowhere, and its preposterous child blowing soap bubbles on a globe belong distinctly to the cheerful school of Philistia, and are not burdened with meanings of any kind. That makes them so refreshing to our eyes; and besides I have always regarded them with sincere affection, because of the pleasure they afforded me in infancy. It was one of the unwritten laws of our nursery that, when a new magazine arrived, the old one passed into our possession. We painted all the pictures with water colors, and we cut out the little figures on the cover for paper dolls. Not the child straddling over the globe! It was impossible to make anything out of him, owing to his uncomfortable position. But the lads in tunics we thought extremely pretty, especially the one in the right-hand corner, whose head was as round as a bullet. The left-hand boy had a slightly