STEPHEN GIRARD.

THE "mariner and merchant" of ships and inconveniences of poverty, Philadelphia, whose conduct offers so many apparent contradictions to the student of character-upon whom and whose acts, living and dead, so much of the public attention has been expended for half a century-was born of humble French parentage, in the environs of Bordeaux, on the 21st of May, 1750. Of the exact condition of the family little is known, beyond the fact that his parent, Pierre Girard, a sea captain, was the father of five children, of whom Stephen was the eldest, and that his mother's name was La fargue. It is the case of thousands who have come to America from the old world, leaving, in youth, a home, to which they owed but little, forming new associations, and seldom recurring, in the rush of active life, to those early circumstances which the changes of fortune have rendered remote to them as another existence. A childhood of poverty and ignorance is not likely to be much talked of by a man who has happily emerged from it in prosperity. Occasionally the pride which apes humility will take advantage of the contrast, to heighten the claim of successful merit; but there was nothing of this prating vanity about Girard. Experience had taught him the hard

and he was not the man to dwell upon an unpleasant reminiscence; he had no fancy to disguise the scene, and he would have considered it a waste of time to bestow upon the past, words which might be more profitably expended on the present and the future. He would, indeed, sometimes refer to his early years; but it was not in a spirit of triumph so much as of regret that he had been deprived of the advantages of education at that period. At least the feeling was a mixed one. Late in life, at the age of sixty-three, he wrote: "I have the proud satisfaction to know that my conduct, my labor and my economy, have enabled me to do one hundred times more for my relatives than they altogether have ever done for me since the day of my birth. While my brothers were taught at college, I was the only one whose education was neglected. But the love of labor, which has not left me yet, has placed me in the ranks of citizens useful to society." A second marriage by his father, in the childhood of Stephen, seems to have acted unfavorably upon his education. "I was very young," he wrote in 1789, "when my father mar ried again, and since then, I can say with truth, I have made my way alone,

with means gained from my nurse, the ence to the orphans to be educated in sea." 1

his college to New York, "the first The youth, with the consent of his port on the continent of North Ameriparents, early chose a nautical life, and ca at which I arrived." He there met in 1764, at about the age of fourteen, with Mr. Thomas Randall, a merchant embarked as a sailor for St. Domingo, of the place, who proved of assistance and for some nine years was employed to him in his speculations and voyages, in voyaging between Bordeaux and the which were steadily continued for three French West India islands. Before years between that city, New Orleans the end of this period he had reached and the West Indies, as mate, and the station of first officer of his vessel afterwards captain and part owner, a -not a lightly earned title; for in ad- circumstance which he also alludes to dition to the service he had gone in his will, where he mentions New through, we have the further evidence Orleans as "the first port of the conti of his attainments, of a regularly nent at which I first traded, in the first granted government license as captain, instance as first officer and subsequentafter due examination by the authori- ly as master and part owner of a vessel ties, according to the state regulation and cargo." at the time. More than this: it was a condition of the privilege to command a vessel, that the applicant, besides a certain nautical training, should have served two years in the national marine, and be of the age of twenty five. Both of the two last conditions were dispensed with in Girard's favor.

His first mercantile venture on his own account was at this time, when he got together by his own credit and the aid of his father, some three thousand dollars' worth of goods, which he sailed with to St. Domingo in the beginning of 1774. Having disposed of his venture, he invested the sum in the productions of the island, and carried them to New York, where he arrived in July of that year, a circumstance to which he makes allusion in his memorable will, in giving a certain prefer

1

In 1777 he made his first appearance at Philadelphia in one of these ventures, and, leaving the sea, established himself as a trader in Water street, in a locality where he afterwards became so widely celebrated. He was at this time twenty-seven years of age, well stored with experience, having begun life early, and acquired a practical knowledge of the world, or that portion of it with which his dealings for some time lay, in his very boyhood. It is a fact of great importance in the study of his success, for he was thus enabled to start with a stock of useful knowledge in advance of those of the same age, and concentrate all his youthful energies upon his one absorbing pursuit of gain. The main spring, however, was in his own mind, more than in circumstances.

There was a personal defect which

Biography of Stephen Girard, by Henry W. Arey, may have exerted some influence in

Philadelphia, 1857.

forming his character-a filin or blind

marriage, she was admitted an insane. patient into the Pennsylvania Hospital, where she lingered till 1815, a period of more than a quarter of a century The hour arrived for her burial. At

ness which came over his right eye, of which he lost the sight while a child. This probably added to the austerity of his nature, spoken of in his early sea service. He was a calm, steady, thinking youth, thrown upon a rough her husband's request she was interred trading life, where commercial success -implying honesty, sobriety, judgment, industry, with a mixture, perhaps, of some baser qualities-was the highest virtue. A youth of tough fibre, mental and physical; of a strong, resolute will; rude, wanting in all the refinements of education, but possess ing a large share of the manifold capacities of a man, gnarled and inveterate in the pursuit of a single object. Most men who attain eminence have some master passion which swallows up the rest. That of Girard was a good, strong, lasting one, growing all the more powerful as he grew older, and lesser vices failed-the desire of accumu. lation. Yet it would be as unphilosophical as untrue to confine all his emotions to the sole love of money. To play well upon a single string, there must be a general knowledge of the powers of harmony; and to be such a brave miser as Girard became, was to exercise very many of the higher faculties of a man.

beneath the lawn in front of the institu-tion, and when the simple grave was ready, he came at the close of the day to the silent funeral. After he had cast a last look at the remains, and the humble service was over, he said to a member of the society of Friends who stood by, "It is very well." That was all; and there is a touch of pathos in the scene, enforced upon our attention when we read of his gift, at this time, of three thousand dollars to the institution.' There were doubtless visions of other things in this man's mind be sides money, though he may have wan tonly, resolutely made wreck of them. His powerful nature must have felt something of the sorrow of this scene, the index to nearly forty years which had passed since his marriage with the beautiful girl of sixteen-the story of his more than withered domestic life. There had been one child, a girl, the fruit of this union, born in the hospi tal; it was tenderly cared for by the father, but died in infancy.

We return from this anticipation of his domestic career, to trace the steps of his financial progress. Its beginnings were sufficiently humble. During the British occupation of the city he removed with his wife to a small farm which he purchased at Mount

He appears, soon after taking up his residence in Philadelphia, to have fallen in love with a beautiful girl of sixteen, the daughter of a calker, who was in the employ of a gentleman's family in the city as a servant girl. He married her in 1777, and the union was an unhappy one. He applied for a divorce. at one time, but on what grounds we are not informed. Nine years after the phia, 1832, p. 40.

Biography of Girard, by Stephen Simpson, Philadel

Holly, in New Jersey, where he occu- lic hospital, which had got to be in an pied himself in petty retailing and traffic, supplying the American troops with small tavern luxuries. Girard's claret and pretty wife appear to have been well known to the officers. When the British left the city he returned and engaged in the West India trade with St. Domingo. In 1784 he sailed for Charleston, in a vessel built to his order, and thence on one of his voyages of profit to the Mediterranean, leaving his brother John, who had assisted his operations in St. Domingo, to manage his business in Philadelphia. On his return the partnership was dissolved, it being one of the conditions of Mr. Girard's mind that his will must be imperative, without contest.

The next important event of his life is one upon which his biographers will ever delight to dwell: his public spirit and care of the sick in the memorable yellow fever season of 1793. The consternation and suffering of the people of the city during that pestilence, have probably never been surpassed by like visitations of calamity. The details, as drawn by the sober pen of Matthew Carey, and not exaggerated in the fic tion of Brockden Brown, equal the terrible pictures of the great plague of London, alike based on the reality, by the imagination of De Foe. All who could escape fled the city; the rest were left to desolation and death. A committee of citizens who voluntarily offered themselves for the protection and care of the city, of whom Girard was one, took such measures as seemed advisable. The cleansing and reorganization, the full supervision of the pub

alarming condition, was one of the most imperative duties to be performed, but who would execute it? To this fearful work Stephen Girard and Peter Helm volunteered-an act which at the time excited, in the language of Matthew Carey, "the surprise and satisfaction of the community," as "an extraordinary effort of humanity." The value of Girard's services was felt at once. He was through life an eminently practical man, looking for tangible results on sober principles of action. Much, indeed, was left out in his philosophy; but within its scope he was supremely efficient. His administra tive faculty was seen at once in the affairs of the hospital. "Order," says his biographer, "soon reigned where all before was confusion; cleanliness took the place of filth; attendance and medicines were at hand; supplies and accommodations were provided, and on the very next day he reported the hos pital as ready to afford every assistance." He continued to give it his personal attention for sixty daysministering to the sick and dying, and using his credit to meet the public wants. A letter which he wrote in September of that year, in the midst of the calamity, to a mercantile house in Baltimore, breathes the spirit of exalted philanthropy. "The deplorable situation," he writes, "to which fright and sickness have reduced the inhabitants of our city, demands succor from those who do not fear death, or who at least do not see any risk in the epidemic which now pre vails here. This will occupy me for