_Francis Hopkinson._--On September 5, 1774, forty-four respectable gentlemen, representing twelve “colonies and provinces in North America,” made their way into Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia, and there began “to consult upon the present state of the colonies.” Thus came into life the first Continental Congress, and with it the permanent political union of the American people. As they came out from that hall, some of them may have found, on stepping into Mr. John Dunlap’s shop not far away, a lively-looking little book--_A Pretty Story_--just come from the printer’s hands, in which book, under the veil of playful allegory, they could read in a few minutes a graphic and indeed a quite tremendous history of the very events that had brought them together in that place. Even a glance over this little book will show that here at last was a writer, enlisted in the colonial cause, who was able to defend that cause, and to assail its enemies, with a fine and a very rare weapon--that of humour. The personages included in _A Pretty Story_ are few; its topics are simple and palpable, and even now in but little need of elucidation; the plot and incidents of the fiction travel in the actual footsteps of well-known history; while the aptness, the delicacy, and the humour of the allegory give to the reader the most delightful surprises, and are well sustained to the very end. Indeed, the wit of the author flashes light upon every legal question then at issue; and the stern and even technical debate between the colonies and the motherland is here translated into a piquant and a bewitching novelette. It soon became known that its author was Francis Hopkinson.