Etidorhpa; or, The End of Earth. Read online

  PREFACE TO THIS EDITION.

  The foot-note on page 160, with the connected matter, has awakenedconsiderable interest in the life and fate of Professor Daniel Vaughn.

  The undersigned has received many letters imparting interestinginformation relating to Professor Vaughn's early history, and askingmany questions concerning a man of whose memory the writer thinks sohighly but whose name is generally unknown.

  Indeed, as some have even argued that the author of Etidorhpa has nopersonal existence, the words John Uri Lloyd being a _nom de plume_, soothers have accepted Professor Vaughn to have been a fanciful creationof the mystical author.

  Professor Daniel Vaughn was one whose life lines ran nearly parallelwith those of the late Professor C. S. Rafinesque, whose eventful historyhas been so graphically written by Professor R. Ellsworth Call. The cupsof these two talented men were filled with privation's bitterness, andin no other place has this writer known the phrase "The Deadly Parallel"so aptly appropriate. Both came to America, scholars, scientists byeducation; both traveled through Kentucky, teachers; both gave freely tothe world, and both suffered in their old age, dying inpoverty--Rafinesque perishing in misery in Philadelphia and Vaughn inCincinnati.

  Daniel Vaughn was not a myth, and, in order that the reader may knowsomething of the life and fate of this eccentric man, an appendix hasbeen added to this edition of Etidorhpa, in which a picture of his faceis shown as the writer knew it in life, and in which brief mention ismade of his record.

  The author here extends his thanks to Professor Richard Nelson and toFather Eugene Brady for their kindness to the readers of Etidorhpa andhimself, for to these gentlemen is due the credit of the appendedhistorical note.

  J. U. L.