Preface to This Edition

Etidorhpa, by John Uri Lloyd, [1897], at sacred-texts.com

p. viii p. ix

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION.

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

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

Indeed, as some have even argued that the author of Etidorhpa has no personal existence, the words John Uri Lloyd being a nom de plume, so others have accepted Professor Vaughn to have been a fanciful creation of the mystical author.

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

Daniel Vaughn was not a myth, and, in order that the reader may know something of the life and fate of this eccentric man, an appendix has been added to this edition of Etidorhpa, in which a picture of his face is shown as the writer knew it in life, and in which brief mention is made of his record.

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

J. U. L.