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Paper Covers part 2

That there is a character in American design which is hardening into style, I think every one who has had much to do with American designers will agree," wrote the lady who is the chief of the Associated Artists, a few years ago; and Mrs. Wheeler went on to declare that this American style seems to possess three important qualities: "First, absolute fidelity and truth, as shown in Japanese art; second, grace of line, which perhaps comes from familiarity with the forms of the Renascence; and third, imagination, or individuality of treatment." In its own way the American pictorial poster has felt the influence of this forward movement; and it can be called to bear witness in behalf of Mrs. Wheeler's declaration, just as her own embroideries and textiles can, or the La Farge and Tiffany stained glass, or any other latter day development of the art instinct of the American people.

A habit of the German periodical Daheim of changing its cover with every issue, gives the outside of this publication a certain freshness not always to be discovered on the inside. The habit has been adopted also by the French monthly Figaro Illustre, which reproduces polychromatically a water-colour drawing of one or another of the brilliant French painters of the day. Perhaps the monthly change of the design allows the paper-cover to serve also as a pictorial poster to draw the attention of those who pass by the stall on which it is exposed to the appearance of the new number. One American periodical has acquired the same habit, The Ladies' Home Journal, which has reproduced on its broad front page drawings by most of the leading American artists in black and white.

A former cover of St. Nicholas, the children's magazine, was designed by Mr. Walter Crane, to whom, for that and for other things, the gratitude of the nursery is forever due. Its present cover was drawn by Mr. Harold R Sherwin. When Robert Louis Stevenson, in his "Child's Garden of Verses," sings of "Picture Books in Winter," he tells us that

All the pretty things put by
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.
We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

But these illuminated horn-books, these tiny tomes of youthful joy, are the guerdon of the children of the present. The children of the past knew them not. "The New England Primer" had a cover of the utmost typographic severity, as dignified and as scornful of vain delights as the "Bay Psalm Book" itself. Learning was not made alluring for the Sons of the Pilgrim Fathers, nor for their grandsons. I doubt not that Jonathan Edwards would have denounced "Reading without Tears" as a pestilent and irreligious work.

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