the expression of his countenance was soft and mild. He had such a nice sense of honor that he refused to invest in the loans of the State while he was Treasurer, and when compelled to pay certain extravagant bills for the Mint, had them charged against his own salary. His modesty, partly due, doubtless, to the repression and religious seclusion through which his forefathers had for centuries passed, and partly to certain apparently feminine traits in his character, amounted to a diffidence which was his chief defect. His tender sympathies went out to all of his fellows, and were catholic enough to embrace the negro slaves and the Conestoga Indians who had fallen a prey to the vengeful instincts of the border. His tastes were simple and plain, his wants few, and his greatest pleasures were found within the circle of his own home. No higher tribute was ever accorded to human rectitude than was offered to him by the author of the Declaration of American Independence. “Nothing could give me more pleasure,” wrote that statesman in a private letter to his daughter Martha, “than your being much with that worthy family, wherein you will see the best examples of rational life, and learn to imitate them.”
Such was the career and such the character of David Rittenhouse. When, a few years ago, Pennsylvania was called upon to place in the Capitol at Washington the statues of her two worthiest sons, she ought to have taken her warrior Wayne, and beside him set her philosopher Rittenhouse, who in his ancestry best represents that quiet and peaceful religious thought which led to her settlement, and in himself the highest intellectual plane she has yet reached.
