Part 32

"In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse," continued my uncle Toby, "when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house, thou shouldst have offered him my house, too. A sick brother officer should have the best quarters, Trim, and if we had him with us, we could tend and look to him. Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim, and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's and mine together, we might recruit him again at once and set him upon his legs."

"In a fortnight, or three weeks," added my uncle Toby, smiling, "he might march." "He will never march, an', please your honor, in this world," said the corporal. "He will march," said my uncle Toby, rising from the side of the bed with one shoe off. "An', please your honor," said the corporal, "he will never march, but to his grave." "He shall march," cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch, "he shall march to his regiment." "He can not stand it," said the corporal. "He shall be supported," said my uncle Toby. "He'll drop at last," said the corporal, "and what will become of his boy?" "He shall not drop," said my uncle Toby, firmly. "Ah, welladay, do what we can for him," said Trim, maintaining his point, "the poor soul will die." "He shall not die, by G--d," cried my uncle Toby.

The accusing spirit which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in, and the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.

My uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches pocket, and, having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep.

The sun looked bright the morning after to every eye in the village but LeFevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology, set himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did; how he had rested in the night; what was his complaint; where was his pain, and what could he do to help him? and without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal, the night before, for him.

"You shall go home directly, LeFevre," said my uncle Toby, "to my house, and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter, and we'll have an apothecary, and the corporal shall be your nurse and I'll be your servant, LeFevre."

There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul and showed you the goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat and was pulling it toward him. The blood and spirits of LeFevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back, the film forsook his eyes for a moment, and he looked up wishfully in my uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy, and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the pulse fluttered--stopped--went on--throbbed--stopped again--moved--stopped--shall I go on? No.

* * * * *

XXIII.

STEPHEN GIRARD

(BORN 1750--DIED 1831.)

THE NAPOLEON OF MERCHANTS--HIS LIFE SUCCESSFUL, AND YET A FAILURE.

Imagine the figure of an old man, low in stature, squarely built, clumsily dressed, and standing on large feet. To this uncouth form, add a repulsive face, wrinkled, cold, colorless, and stony, with one eye dull and the other blind--a "wall-eye." His expression is that of a man wrapped in the mystery of his own hidden thoughts. He looks--

"Like monumental bronze, unchanged his look-- A soul which pity never touched or shook-- Trained, from his lowly cradle to his bier, The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook Unchanging, fearing but the charge of fear-- A stoic of the mart, a man without a tear."

Such a man was Stephen Girard, one of the most distinguished merchants in the annals of commerce, and the founder of the celebrated Girard College in Philadelphia. Let us briefly trace his history and observe his character.

Girard was a Frenchman by birth, born in the environs of Bordeaux, in May, 1750, of obscure parents. His early instruction was very limited; and, being deformed by a wall-eye, he was an object of ridicule to the companions of his boyhood. This treatment, as is supposed by his biographer, soured his temper, made him shrink from society, and led him to live among his own thoughts rather than in mental communion with his fellows.

The precise cause of his leaving his native hearth-stone is unknown. The fact is certain that he did leave it, when only ten or twelve years old, and sailed, a poor cabin-boy, to the West Indies. This was his starting-point in life. Never had any boy a smaller capital on which to build his fortune. He went out from his unhappy home, ignorant, poor, unfriended, and unknown. That from such a cheerless beginning he should rise to the rank of a merchant prince must be accounted one of the marvels of human history.

His first step was to gain the confidence of his superiors, not so much by affability and courtesy--for of these social virtues he was never possessed--as by steady good conduct, fidelity to his employers, temperance, and studied effort to do his humble duties well. Whatsoever his hands found to do he did with his might. As a consequence, we find him, in a few years, in high favor with a Captain Randall, of New York, who always spoke of him as "my Stephen," and who promoted him from one position to another, until he secured him the command of a small vessel, and sent him on trading voyages between the ports of New York and New Orleans. That the poor cabin-boy should rise, by his own merits, in some six or seven years, to be the commander of a vessel was success such as few lads have ever won with such slender means and few helps as were within reach of young Girard.

When only nineteen, we find him in Philadelphia, driving a thrifty but quiet trade in a little shop in Water Street. Shortly after opening this store, his fancy was taken captive by a maiden of sixteen Summers, named Mary, but familiarly called Polly, Lum. She was a shipwright's daughter, a pretty brunette, who was in the habit of going to the neighboring pump, barefooted, "with her rich, glossy, black hair hanging in disheveled curls about her neck." Her modesty pleased him, her beauty charmed him, and, after a few months of rude courtship, he was married to her, in 1770.

His marriage, instead of carrying happiness into the home over which he installed his beautiful bride, only embittered two lives. It was a union of mere fancy on his side, and of self-interest on hers, not of genuine affection. Their dispositions were not congenial. She was ignorant, vulgar, slovenly. He was arbitrary, harsh, rude, imperious, unyielding. How could their lives flow on evenly together? It was impossible. The result was misery to both, and, as we shall see hereafter, the once beautiful Polly Lum ended her days in a mad-house--a sad illustration of the folly of premature, ill-assorted marriages.

Finding little at his fireside to move his heart, Girard gave his whole soul to business, now trading to San Domingo and New Orleans, and then in his store in Water Street. When the Revolutionary War began, it swept his commercial ventures from the ocean, but he, still bent on gain and indifferent as to the means of winning it, then opened a grocery, and engaged in bottling cider and claret. When the British army occupied Philadelphia, he moved this bottling business to Mount Holly, in New Jersey, where he continued until the American flag again floated over Independence Hall.

But times were hard and money scarce, and for awhile Girard added very little to his means. Yet his keen eye was sharply watching for golden opportunities, and his active mind busily thinking how to create or improve them. In 1780, circumstances made trade with New Orleans and San Domingo very profitable. He promptly engaged in it, and in two years doubled his resources.

Peace being restored, Girard, full of faith in the future of his adopted country, leased a block of stores for ten years at a very low rent. The following year, while business still lay stunned by the blows it had received during the war, he obtained a stipulation from his landlord, giving him the right to renew his lease for a second ten years, if he chose to demand it, when the first one should expire. This was an act of judicious foresight. When, at the expiration of the first lease, he visited his landlord, that gentleman, on seeing him enter his counting-room, said:

"Well, Mr. Girard, you have made out so well by your bargain that I suppose you will hardly hold me to the renewal of the lease for ten years more."

"I have come," replied Gerard, with a look of grim satisfaction, "to secure the ten years more. I shall not let you off."

Nor did he. And the great profits he derived from that fortunate lease greatly broadened the foundation of his subsequently colossal fortune.

As yet, however, his wealth was very moderate, for in 1790, at the dissolution of a partnership he had formed with his brother who had come to America, his own share of the business amounted to only thirty thousand dollars. And yet, forty years later, he died leaving a fortune of ten millions.