PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.

The word "edition" used here is not employed as indicating a revision or correction of matter in the original work, for there was little that needed amendment or recall, but it is used in the sense of new "lives" and "sketches" added to the book as at first printed and published-there being a number of copies of first issue in print left over and unbound, to which this edition is added and all bound together, making now a large dictionary of county biography.

The original volume of 568 pages, containing 153 "lives and "sketches," published 1879, has stood the test of eight years' public examination and criticism, unimpeached. A second edition (or addition) also, of over thirty pages, of persons who sought the honor of being added to the book, were printed in 1882. Readers of the present publication will perceive, that the same manner of presenting lives and memorial sketches has been observed as at first, with this exception, the mottos or poetic quotations of the first have been entirely omitted; this was at the suggestion of a friend-whether wisely or not-it is plain that, if it detracts from the literary appearance, it at least makes the contents look more matter-of-fact.

In reference to the imputation sometimes heard from jealous persons, "that those men or families recorded have themselves procured admission to its pages," the author affirms on the contrary that in nearly every instance he solicited the honor of writing them himself. Further, of the matter of these last lives and sketches, the author wants it clearly understood, that the material facts upon which the narratives are founded in every instance have been procured from the subjects, or their

friends, or added of the author's own knowledge; but wherever he has added opinion or sentiment concerning a person described, it is strictly the author's own volunteer tribute to his or her character of something he regarded as just and true in every particular. To this there is no exception but in one or two instances, where sketches were drawn by friends of the subjects and without revision by the author.

The patrons of the third edition will observe, that the writer has laid aside his habitual bashfulness, as Franklin once did, and appended a revised copy of an auto-biography formerly intended for this work but issued later in a pamphlet of essays.

As there are several items of needful information concerning sketches of first and second edition, and a few errors in both, corrected in the "appendix" to the second edition, those pages are also bound in this third edition; the reference therein, however, to "the sketch of the author," is superfluous, as that life has been revised and reprinted in this last edition.

Philadelphia, March 1, 1887.

M. AUGE.

* Moses Auge. See Bean's. His:..Pentgomery Co. to." (1584) p. 77.57.

*

DAVID RITTENHOUSE.

Modern philosophy anon,

Will, at the rate she's rushing on,
Yoke lightning to her railroad car:

And posting like a shooting star

Swift as a solar radiation,

Ride the wide circuit of creation.-Old Song,*

This name is a household word in Pennsylvania-a synonym for mathematics, mechanics and philosophy. No name in American annals furnishes a more exemplary instance of climbing the hill of science almost unaided, and by the mere force of native genius, industry and perseverance; and there is no name in history that affords more encouragement to the young to pry into the arcana of nature in search of her yet unrevealed truths.

David Rittenhouse, or Rittenhaus, as the name was originally spelled, was the son of Matthias Rittenhouse, one of the original settlers (or of the preceding generation) who emigrated to "ye Germantown," or vicinity, soon after Penn founded Philadelphia. He was born on the 8th of April, 1732, almost contemporaneous with Washington. He was the oldest son, and as such put early to the plow, for help in those days was the great desideratum, as every useful thing had to be got from the earth by delving for it. But like Burns, who about the same time was weaving poetic measures in the furrow, so Rittenhouse had his thoughts revolving with cogs, levers and equations, as he abstractedly strode over the fields. Although born on the Wissahickon, his father removed with him when a child to a farm a little northwest of Norristown, where he showed his mechanical bent so early as his eighth year in constructing a miniature water-power mill. His father had a brother Henry, located near him in Worcester township, from

*The sentiment of this verse was prophetic, for it was written twenty years before the invention of the telegraph.