Facts, we are often told, are stubborn things. They truly are when we call them and they will not come; when we seek them and they are not to be found when such as we have once met hide themselves away in some obscure recess of our brains, and refuse to come forth in response to our most earnest demand. Facts are elusive and baf?ing things. Escaping us when we most want them, playing about as just out of reach, failing to respond to whistle or call. Yet they are things we need daily hardly an hour passes in which there is not something that we wish to know, and we seek in the cells of memory in vain. Facts are our tools in trade, the most useful and necessary implements of the man of affairs. The daily need of the mistress of the household, the steady demand of the growing boy and girl; and nothing is more useful in home and office, in school and library, than an ample compendium of the things the world wants to know, a cabinet whose door may be opened at a moment's notice and the stubbornest fact drawn triumphantly forth. All must acknowledge that such a compendium is a very convenient thing to have at one's elbow — indispensable would be a better word. Such a compendium we have here, a work replete with facts in the most satisfying fullness and variety, brimful of useful information suited to all tastes and needs, containing just what every one most wants. From bustling housewife to busy merchant or mechanic, from stirring schoolboy to the young lady about to be launched upon society.