Yesterday, when weary with writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. "It seems, then," said I aloud, "that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce, grains of salt, drops of vinegar and oil, and slices of eggs, had been floating about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen by chance that there would come a salad." "Yes," says my wife, "but not so nice and well dressed as this of mine is!"--KEPLER, _apud_ Tait and Stewart, _Paradoxical Philosophy_. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U. S. A. THE WRITINGS OF JOHN FISKE [Illustration] THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA _With some Account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. With a steel portrait of Mr. Fiske, many maps, facsimiles, etc. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00._ Those who care for geography and for primitive culture will doubtless find this "Discovery of America," as we have found it, one of the most agreeable and instructive books on both those topics that have appeared in a good many years.... The book brings together a great deal of information hitherto accessible only in special treatises, and elucidates with care and judgment some of the most perplexing problems in the history of discovery.--_The Speaker_ (London). OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS _2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00._ Mr. Fiske's "Old Virginia and Her Neighbours" adds another to those valuable and delightful studies of our early history which are fast approaching the completeness and adequacy of a comprehensive history of the beginnings of the American people. History has rarely been invested with such interest and charm as in these volumes.--_The Outlook_ (New York). THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND _Or, the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty. Crown 8vo, $2.00._ Illustrated Edition. _Containing Portraits, Maps, Facsimiles, Contemporary Views, Prints, and other Historic Materials. 2 vols. 8vo, gilt top, $4.00._ Having in the first chapters strikingly and convincingly shown that New England's history was the birth of centuries of travail, and having prepared his readers to estimate at their true importance the events of our early colonial life, Mr. Fiske is ready to take up his task as the historian of the New England of the Puritans.... The last chapters give a broad and fair account of the history of the time, but it is easy to see that in his choice of facts, the author has exercised a large power of selection,--a selection which we may note is wonderful in its unfailing accuracy of estimate. As he is busy with the progress towards civil and religious liberty which culminated in the Revolution, his facts are chosen to illustrate that progress.--_Boston Daily Advertiser._ THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION