The word "sketch" implies an outline or delineation of anything, giving broad touches by which only an imperfect idea, at the best, can be conveyed. It is not designed to include all the several and separate acts of a man's life, important or otherwise, for that would necessarily be both comprehensive and minute in its character; nor is any single sketch purely biographical, which would imply a review of the life and character of each person. The design is to give the merest outline, with particular reference, however, to the public life of the persons named. To go into each man's private life, or into his home life, would be both unwarranted and without general value. As a rule one's neighbors know full enough about him, and to afford them correct data for information would perhaps deprive them of the topics of quondam conversation.

All men cannot be great; each has his sphere and the success of his life is to be measured by the manner in which he fills it. But men may be both true and good, may be morally great, for in true living there are no degrees of greatness—there is no respect to persons.

In the sketches which follow there will be found few names not entitled to a place in the public confidence. The names are, for the most part, those of men who have been closely and for a long time identified with the interests of the county and their several townships. If in their lives, no mention appears of the hardships they endured in the early days of the county's history, it is because reference has been made to pioneer life in the earlier pages of the volume, and a repetition of individual experiences would be devoid both of interest and aim.

To the county the names of none of its earliest settlers are without interest; and if their names do not appear among these sketches it is because an inauspicious destiny arrested their career. Their place was already marked. To have obtained sketches of their lives would have been to the writer, next to the consciousness of duty fulfilled, the highest of gratifications. Their lives would have obtained and justified all sympathy, and their names recall heroic examples, of which the men of to-day, with better fortunes, though with less daring, are neither the companions, the rivals, nor the masters. In the great majority of instances the bat-

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tles in which many persons named have been engaged are suppressed—not because they are valueless, but because the several engagement of the Iowa regiments may be found in another part of the volume. This has not been generally the case with regiments outside the state, the glory of the war represented themselves in remarkable battles in different states but occurring at the same date! It has, in a word, been a paramount object that men should be sketched as they are, rather than as they think they are, or wish, perhaps, to be.