Part 20

Within the memory of many persons still alive, "old Girard," as the famous banker was usually styled, a short, stout, brisk old gentleman, used to walk, in his swift, awkward way, the streets of the lower part of Philadelphia. Though everything about him indicated that he had very little in common with his fellow-citizens, he was the marked man of the city for more than a generation. His aspect was rather insignificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was old-fashioned and shabby; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck-cloth, the wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last century. He was blind of one eye; and though his bushy eyebrows gave some character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of expression. He had also the absent look of a man who either had no thoughts or was absorbed in thought; and he shuffled along on his enormous feet, looking neither to the right nor to the left. There was always a certain look of the old mariner about him, though he had been fifty years an inhabitant of the town. When he rode it was in the plainest, least comfortable gig in Philadelphia, drawn by an ancient and ill-formed horse, driven always by the master's own hand at a good pace. He chose still to live where he had lived for fifty years, in Water Street, close to the wharves, in a small and inconvenient house, darkened by tall storehouses, amid the bustle, the noise, and the odors of commerce. His sole pleasure was to visit once a day a little farm which he possessed a few miles out of town, where he was wont to take off his coat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, and personally labor in the field and in the barn, hoeing corn, pruning trees, tossing hay, and not disdaining even to assist in butchering the animals which he raised for market. It was no mere ornamental or experimental farm. He made it pay. All of its produce was carefully, nay, scrupulously husbanded, sold, recorded, and accounted for. He loved his grapes, his plums, his pigs, and especially his rare breed of Canary-birds; but the people of Philadelphia had the full benefit of their increase,--at the highest market rates.

Many feared, many served, but none loved this singular and lonely old man. If there was among the very few who habitually conversed with him one who understood and esteemed him, there was but one; and he was a man of such abounding charity, that, like Uncle Toby, if he had heard that the Devil was hopelessly damned, he would have said, "I am sorry for it." Never was there a person more destitute than Girard of the qualities which win the affection of others. His temper was violent, his presence forbidding, his usual manner ungracious, his will inflexible, his heart untender, his imagination dead. He was odious to many of his fellow-citizens, who considered him the hardest and meanest of men. He had lived among them for half a century, but he was no more a Philadelphian in 1830 than in 1776. He still spoke with a French accent, and accompanied his words with a French shrug and French gesticulation. Surrounded with Christian churches which he had helped to build, he remained a sturdy unbeliever, and possessed the complete works of only one man, Voltaire. He made it a point of duty to labor on Sunday, as a good example to others. He made no secret of the fact, that he considered the idleness of Sunday an injury to the people, moral and economical. He would have opened his bank on Sundays, if any one would have come to it. For his part, he required no rest, and would have none. He never travelled. He never attended public assemblies or amusements. He had no affections to gratify, no friends to visit, no curiosity to appease, no tastes to indulge. What he once said of himself appeared to be true, that he rose in the morning with but a single object, and that was to labor so hard all day as to be able to sleep all night. The world was absolutely nothing to him but a working-place. He scorned and scouted the opinion, that old men should cease to labor, and should spend the evening of their days in tranquillity. "No," he would say, "labor is the price of life, its happiness, its everything; to rest is to rust; every man should labor to the last hour of his ability." Such was Stephen Girard, the richest man who ever lived in Pennsylvania.

This is an unpleasing picture of a citizen of polite and amiable Philadelphia. It were indeed a grim and dreary world in which should prevail the principles of Girard. But see what this man has done for the city that loved him not! Vast and imposing structures rise on the banks of the Schuylkill, wherein, at this hour, six hundred poor orphan boys are fed, clothed, trained, and taught, upon the income of the enormous estate which he won by this entire consecration to the work of accumulating property. In the ample grounds of Girard College, looking up at its five massive marble edifices, strolling in its shady walks or by its verdant play-grounds, or listening to the cheerful cries of the boys at play, the most sympathetic and imaginative of men must pause before censuring the sterile and unlovely life of its founder. And if he should inquire closely into the character and career of the man who willed this great institution into being, he would perhaps be willing to admit that there was room in the world for one Girard, though it were a pity there should ever be another. Such an inquiry would perhaps disclose that Stephen Girard was endowed by nature with a great heart as well as a powerful mind, and that circumstances alone closed and hardened the one, cramped and perverted the other. It is not improbable that he was one of those unfortunate beings who desire to be loved, but whose temper and appearance combine to repel affection. His marble statue, which adorns the entrance to the principal building, if it could speak, might say to us, "Living, you could not understand nor love me; dead, I compel at least your respect." Indeed, he used to say, when questioned as to his career, "Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."

Girard's recollections of his childhood were tinged with bitterness. He was born at Bordeaux in 1750. He was the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of substance and respectability. He used to complain that, while his younger brothers were taught at college, his own education was neglected, and that he acquired at home little more than the ability to read and write. He remembered, too, that at the age of eight years he discovered, to his shame and sorrow, that one of his eyes was blind,--a circumstance that exposed him to the taunts of his companions. The influence of a personal defect, and of the ridicule it occasions, upon the character of a sensitive child, can be understood only by those whose childhood was embittered from that cause; but such cases as those of Byron and Girard should teach those who have the charge of youth the crime it is to permit such defects to be the subject of remark. Girard also early lost his mother, an event which soon brought him under the sway of a step-mother. Doubtless he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible boy, since we know that he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible man. Before he was fourteen, having chosen the profession of his father, he left home, with his father's consent, and went to sea in the capacity of cabin-boy. He used to boast, late in life, that he began the world with sixpence in his pocket. Quite enough for a cabin-boy.

For nine years he sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, returning at length with the rank of first mate, or, as the French term it, lieutenant of his vessel. He had well improved his time. Some of the defects of his early education he had supplied by study, and it is evident that he had become a skilful navigator. It was then the law of France that no man should command a vessel who was not twenty-five years old, and had not sailed two cruises in a ship of the royal navy. Girard was but twenty-three, and had sailed in none but merchant-vessels. His father, however, had influence enough to procure him a dispensation; and in 1773 he was licensed to command. He appears to have been scarcely just to his father when he wrote, sixty-three years after:

"I have the proud satisfaction of knowing that my conduct, my labor, and my economy have enabled me to do one hundred times more for my relations than they all together have ever done for me since the day of my birth."

In the mere amount of money expended, this may have been true; but it is the start toward fortune that is so difficult. His father, besides procuring the dispensation, assisted him to purchase goods for his first commercial venture. At the age of twenty-four, we find him sailing to the West Indies; not indeed in command of the vessel, but probably as mate and supercargo, and part owner of goods to the value of three thousand dollars. He never trod his native land again. Having disposed of his cargo and taken on board another, he sailed for New York, which he reached in July, 1774. The storm of war, which was soon to sweep commerce from the ocean, was already muttering below the horizon, when Stephen Girard, "mariner and merchant," as he always delighted to style himself, first saw the land wherein his lot was to be cast. For two years longer, however, he continued to exercise his twofold vocation. An ancient certificate, preserved among his papers, informs the curious explorer, that,

"in the year 1774, Stephen Girard sailed as mate of a vessel from New York to Orleans, and that he continued to sail out of the said port until May, 1776, when he arrived in Philadelphia commander of a sloop,"

of which the said Stephen Girard was part owner.

Lucky was it for Girard that he got into Philadelphia just when he did, with all his possessions with him. He had the narrowest escape from capture. On his way from New Orleans to a Canadian port, he had lost himself in a fog at the entrance of Delaware Bay, swarming then with British cruisers, of whose presence Captain Girard had heard nothing. His flag of distress brought alongside an American captain, who told him where he was, and assured him that, if he ventured out to-sea, he would never reach port except as a British prize. "Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Girard in great panic, "what shall I do?" "You have no chance but to push right up to Philadelphia," replied the captain. "How am I to get there?" said Girard; "I have no pilot, and I don't know the way." A pilot was found, who, however, demanded a preliminary payment of five dollars, which Girard had not on board. In great distress, he implored the captain to be his security for the sum. He consented, a pilot took charge of the sloop, the anchor was heaved, and the vessel sped on her way. An hour later, while they were still in sight of the anchorage, a British man-of-war came within the capes. But Dr. Franklin, with his oared galleys, his chevaux de frise, his forts, and his signal-stations, had made the Delaware a safe harbor of refuge; and Girard arrived safely at Philadelphia on one of the early days of May, 1776. Thus it was a mere chance of war that gave Girard to the Quaker City. In the whole world he could not have found a more congenial abode, for the Quakers were the only religious sect with which he ever had the slightest sympathy. Quakers he always liked and esteemed, partly because they had no priests, partly because they disregarded ornament and reduced life to its simplest and most obvious utilities, partly because some of their opinions were in accord with his own. He had grown up during the time when Voltaire was sovereign lord of the opinions of Continental Europe. Before landing at Philadelphia, he was already a republican and an unbeliever, and such he remained to the last. The Declaration of Independence was impending: he was ready for it. The "Common Sense" of Thomas Paine had appeared: he was the man of all others to enjoy it. It is, however, questionable if at that time he had English enough to understand it in the original, since the colloquy just reported with the American captain took place in French. He was slow in becoming familiar with the English language, and even to the end of his life seemed to prefer conversing in French.

He was a mariner no more. The great fleet of Lord Howe arrived at New York in July. Every harbor was blockaded, and all commerce was suspended. Even the cargoes of tobacco despatched by Congress to their Commissioners in France, for the purchase of arms and stores, were usually captured before they had cleared the Capes. Captain Girard now rented a small store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his dealings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the rough clothing and general appearance of a sailor. Though but twenty-six years of age, he was called "old Girard." He seemed conscious of his inability to please, but bore the derision of his neighbors with stoical equanimity, and plodded on.

War favors the skilful and enterprising business-man. Girard had a genius for business. He was not less bold in his operations than prudent; and his judgment as a man of business was well-nigh infallible. Destitute of all false pride, he bought whatever he thought he could sell to advantage, from a lot of damaged cordage to a pipe of old port; and he labored incessantly with his own hands. He was a thriving man during the first year of his residence in Philadelphia; his chief gain, it is said, being derived from his favorite business of bottling wine and cider.

The romance, the mystery, the tragedy of his life now occurred. Walking along Water Street one day, near the corner of Vine Street, the eyes of this reserved and ill-favored man were caught by a beautiful servant-girl going to the pump for a pail of water. She was an enchanting brunette of sixteen, with luxuriant black locks curling and clustering about her neck. As she tripped along with bare feet and empty pail, in airy and unconscious grace, she captivated the susceptible Frenchman, who saw in her the realization of the songs of the forecastle and the reveries of the quarter-deck. He sought her acquaintance, and made himself at home in her kitchen. The family whom she served, misinterpreting the designs of the thriving dealer, forbade him the house; when he silenced their scruples by offering the girl his hand in marriage. Ill-starred Polly Lumm! Unhappy Girard! She accepted his offer; and in July, 1777, the incongruous two, being united in matrimony, attempted to become one.

The war interrupted their brief felicity. Philadelphia, often threatened, fell into the hands of Lord Howe in September, 1777; and among the thousands who needlessly fled at his approach were "old Girard" and his pretty young wife. He bought a house at Mount Holly, near Burlington, in New Jersey, for five hundred dollars, to which he removed, and there continued to bottle claret and sell it to the British officers, until the departure of Lord Howe, in June, 1778, permitted his return to Philadelphia. The gay young officers, it is said, who came to his house at Mount Holly to drink his claret, were far from being insensible to the charms of Mrs. Girard; and tradition further reports that on one occasion a dashing colonel snatched a kiss, which the sailor resented, and compelled the officer to apologize for.

Of all miserable marriages this was one of the most miserable. Here was a young, beautiful, and ignorant girl united to a close, ungracious, eager man of business, devoid of sentiment, with a violent temper and an unyielding will. She was an American, he a Frenchman; and that alone was an immense incompatibility. She was seventeen, he twenty-seven. She was a woman; he was a man without imagination, intolerant of foibles. She was a beauty, with the natural vanities of a beauty; he not merely had no taste for decoration, he disapproved it on principle. These points of difference would alone have sufficed to endanger their domestic peace; but time developed something that was fatal to it. Their abode was the scene of contention for eight years; at the expiration of which period Mrs. Girard showed such symptoms of insanity that her husband was obliged to place her in the Pennsylvania Hospital. In these distressing circumstances, he appears to have spared no pains for her restoration. He removed her to a place in the country, but without effect. She returned to his house only to render life insupportable to him. He resumed his old calling as a mariner, and made a voyage to the Mediterranean; but on his return he found his wife not less unmanageable than before. In 1790, thirteen years after their marriage, and five after the first exhibition of insanity, Mrs. Girard was placed permanently in the hospital; where, nine months after, she gave birth to a female child. The child soon died; the mother never recovered her reason. For twenty-five years she lived in the hospital, and, dying in 1815, was buried in the hospital grounds after the manner of the Quakers. The coffin was brought to the grave, followed by the husband and the managers of the institution, who remained standing about it in silence for several minutes. It was then lowered to its final resting-place, and again the company remained motionless and silent for a while. Girard looked at the coffin once more, then turned to an acquaintance and said, as he walked away, "It is very well." A green mound, without headstone or monument, still marks the spot where the remains of this unhappy woman repose. Girard, both during his lifetime and after his death, was a liberal, though not lavish, benefactor of the institution which had so long sheltered his wife.

Fortunes were not made rapidly in the olden time. After the Revolution, Girard engaged in commerce with the West Indies, in partnership with his brother John; and he is described in an official paper of the time as one who "carried on an extensive business as a merchant, and is a considerable owner of real estate." But on the dissolution of the partnership in 1790, when he had been in business, as mariner and merchant, for sixteen years, his estate was valued at only thirty thousand dollars. The times were troubled. The French Revolution, the massacre at St. Domingo, our disturbed relations with England, and afterwards with France, the violence of our party contests, all tended to make merchants timid, and to limit their operations. Girard, as his papers indicate, and as he used to relate in conversation, took more than a merchant's interest in the events of the time. From the first, he had formally cast in his lot with the struggling Colonists, as we learn from a yellow and faded document left among his papers:--

"I do hereby certify that Stephen Girard, of the city of Philadelphia, merchant, hath voluntarily taken the oath of allegiance and fidelity, as directed by an act of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, passed the 13th day of June, A.D. 1777. Witness my hand and seal, the 27th day of October, A.D. 1778.

"JNO. ORD. No. 1678."

The oath was repeated the year following. When the French Revolution had divided the country into two parties, the Federalists and the Republicans, Girard was a Republican of the radical school. He remembered assisting to raise a liberty-pole in the Presidency of John Adams; and he was one of Mr. Jefferson's most uncompromising adherents at a time when men of substance were seldom found in the ranks of the Democrats. As long as he lived, he held the name of Thomas Jefferson in veneration.

We have now to contemplate this cold, close, ungainly, ungracious man in a new character. We are to see that a man may seem indifferent to the woes of individuals, but perform sublime acts of devotion to a community. We are to observe that there are men of sterling but peculiar metal, who only shine when the furnace of general affliction is hottest. In 1793, the malignant yellow-fever desolated Philadelphia. The consternation of the people cannot be conceived by readers of the present day, because we cannot conceive of the ignorance which then prevailed respecting the laws of contagion, because we have lost in some degree the habit of panic, and because no kind of horror can be as novel to us as the yellow-fever was to the people of Philadelphia in 1793. One half of the population fled. Those who remained left their houses only when compelled. Most of the churches, the great Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. Of four daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. Some people constantly smoked tobacco,--even women and children, did so; others chewed garlic; others exploded gunpowder; others burned nitre or sprinkled vinegar; many assiduously whitewashed every surface within their reach; some carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of camphor round their necks; others never ventured abroad without a handkerchief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one ventured to shake hands. Friends who met in the streets gave each other a wide berth, eyed one another askance, exchanged nods, and strode on. It was a custom to walk in the middle of the street, to get as far from the houses as possible. Many of the sick died without help, and the dead were buried without ceremony. The horrid silence of the streets was broken only by the tread of litter-bearers and the awful rumble of the dead-wagon. Whole families perished,--perished without assistance, their fate unknown to their neighbors. Money was powerless to buy attendance for the operation of all ordinary motives was suspended. From the 1st of August to the 9th of November, in a population of twenty-five thousand, there were four thousand and thirty-one burials,--about one in six.

Happily for the honor of human nature, there are always, in times like these, great souls whom base panic cannot prostrate. A few brave physicians, a few faithful clergymen, a few high-minded citizens, a few noble women, remembered and practised what is due to humanity overtaken by a calamity like this. On the 10th of September, a notice, without signature, appeared in the only paper published, stating that all but three of the Visitors of the Poor were sick, dead, or missing, and calling upon all who were willing to help to meet at the City Hall on the 12th. From those who attended the meeting, a committee of twenty-seven was appointed to superintend the measures for relief, of whom Stephen Girard was one. On Sunday, the 15th, the committee met; and the condition of the great hospital at Bush Hill was laid before them. It was unclean, ill-regulated, crowded, and ill-supplied. Nurses could not be hired at any price, for even to approach it was deemed certain death. Then, to the inexpressible astonishment and admiration of the committee, two men of wealth and importance in the city offered personally to take charge of the hospital during the prevalence of the disease. Girard was one of these, Peter Helm the other. Girard appears to have been the first to offer himself. "Stephen Girard," records Matthew Carey, a member of the committee,

"sympathizing with the wretched situation of the sufferers at Bush Hill, voluntarily and unexpectedly offered himself as a manager to superintend that hospital. The surprise and satisfaction excited by this extraordinary effort of humanity can be better conceived than expressed."

That very afternoon, Girard and Helm went out to the hospital, and entered upon their perilous and repulsive duty. Girard chose the post of honor. He took charge of the interior of the hospital, while Mr. Helm conducted its out-door affairs. For sixty days he continued to perform, by day and night, all the distressing and revolting offices incident to the situation. In the great scarcity of help, he used frequently to receive the sick and dying at the gate, assist in carrying them to their beds, nurse them, receive their last messages, watch for their last breath, and then, wrapping them in the sheet they had died upon, carry them out to the burial-ground, and place them in the trench. He had a vivid recollection of the difficulty of finding any kind of fabric in which to wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments had exhausted the supply of sheets. "I would put them," he would say, "in any old rag I could find." If he ever left the hospital, it was to visit the infected districts, and assist in removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying without help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant, who was hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, affords us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime vocation. A carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence of the deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame house; and the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his mouth, opened the door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. A short, thick-set man stepped from the coach and entered the house. In a minute or two, the observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt, yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist the sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own; his long, damp, tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet dragging helpless upon the pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist. Partly dragging, partly lifting, he succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in getting him into the vehicle. He then entered it himself, closed the door, and the carriage drove away towards the hospital.

A man who can do such things at such a time may commit errors and cherish erroneous opinions, but the essence of that which makes the difference between a good man and a bad man must dwell within him. Twice afterwards Philadelphia was visited by yellow-fever, in 1797 and 1798. On both occasions, Girard took the lead, by personal exertion or gifts of money, in relieving the poor and the sick. He had a singular taste for nursing the sick, though a sturdy unbeliever in medicine. According to him, nature, not doctors, is the restorer,--nature, aided by good nursing. Thus, after the yellow-fever of 1798, he wrote to a friend in France:

"During all this frightful time, I have constantly remained in the city; and, without neglecting my public duties, I have played a part which will make you smile. Would you believe it, my friend, that I have visited as many as fifteen sick people in a day? and what will surprise you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single person; but you will think with me, that in my quality of Philadelphia physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confrères has killed fewer than myself."

It is not by nursing the sick, however, that men acquire colossal fortunes. We revert, therefore, to the business career of this extraordinary man. Girard, in the ancient and honorable acceptation of the term, was a merchant; i.e. a man who sent his own ships to foreign countries, and exchanged their products for those of his own. Beginning in the West India trade, with one small schooner built with difficulty and managed with caution, he expanded his business as his capital increased, until he was the owner of a fleet of merchantmen, and brought home to Philadelphia the products of every clime. Beginning with single voyages, his vessels merely sailing to a foreign port and back again, he was accustomed at length to project great mercantile cruises, extending over long periods of time, and embracing many ports. A ship loaded with cotton and grain would sail, for example, to Bordeaux, there discharge, and take in a cargo of wine and fruit; thence to St. Petersburg, where she would exchange her wine and fruit for hemp and iron; then to Amsterdam, where the hemp and iron would be sold for dollars; to Calcutta next for a cargo of tea and silks, with which the ship would return to Philadelphia. Such were the voyages so often successfully made by the Voltaire, the Rousseau, the Helvetius, and the Montesquieu; ships long the pride of Girard and the boast of Philadelphia, their names being the tribute paid by the merchant to the literature of his native land. He seldom failed to make very large profits. He rarely, if ever, lost a ship.

His neighbors, the merchants of Philadelphia, deemed him a lucky man. Many of them thought they could do as well as he, if they only had his luck. But the great volumes of his letters and papers, preserved in a room of the Girard College, show that his success in business was not due, in any degree whatever, to good fortune. Let a money-making generation take note, that Girard principles inevitably produce Girard results. The grand, the fundamental secret of his success, as of all success, was that he understood his business. He had a personal, familiar knowledge of the ports with which he traded, the commodities in which he dealt, the vehicles in which they were carried, the dangers to which they were liable, and the various kinds of men through whom he acted. He observed everything, and forgot nothing. He had done everything himself which he had occasion to require others to do. His directions to his captains and supercargoes, full, minute, exact, peremptory, show the hand of a master. Every possible contingency was foreseen and provided for; and he demanded the most literal obedience to the maxim, "Obey orders, though you break owners." He would dismiss a captain from his service forever, if he saved the whole profits of a voyage by departing from his instructions. He did so on one occasion. Add to this perfect knowledge of his craft, that he had a self-control which never permitted him to anticipate his gains or spread too wide his sails; that his industry knew no pause; that he was a close, hard bargainer, keeping his word to the letter, but exacting his rights to the letter; that he had no vices and no vanities; that he had no toleration for those calamities which result from vices and vanities; that his charities, though frequent, were bestowed only upon unquestionably legitimate objects, and were never profuse; that he was as wise in investing as skilful in gaining money; that he made his very pleasures profitable to himself in money gained, to his neighborhood in improved fruits and vegetables; that he had no family to maintain and indulge; that he held in utter aversion and contempt the costly and burdensome ostentation of a great establishment, fine equipages, and a retinue of servants; that he reduced himself to a money-making machine, run at the minimum of expense;--and we have an explanation of his rapidly acquired wealth, He used to boast, after he was a millionaire, of wearing the same overcoat for fourteen winters; and one of his clerks, who saw him every day for twenty years, declares that he never remembered having seen him wear a new-looking garment but once. Let us note, too, that he was an adept in the art of getting men to serve him with devotion. He paid small salaries, and was never known in his life to bestow a gratuity upon one who served him; but he knew how to make his humblest clerk feel that the master's eye was upon him always. Violent in his outbreaks of anger, his business letters are singularly polite, and show consideration for the health and happiness of his subordinates.

Legitimate commerce makes many men rich; but in Girard's day no man gained by it ten millions of dollars. It was the war of 1812, which suspended commerce, that made this merchant so enormously rich. In 1811, the charter of the old United States Bank expired; and the casting-vote of Vice-President George Clinton negatived the bill for rechartering it. When war was imminent, Girard had a million dollars in the bank of Baring Brothers in London. This large sum, useless then for purposes of commerce,--in peril, too, from the disturbed condition of English finance,--he invested in United States stock and in stock of the United States Bank, both being depreciated in England. Being thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the charter having expired, and its affairs being in liquidation, he bought out the entire concern; and, merely changing the name to Girard's Bank, continued it in being as a private institution, in the same building, with the same coin in its vaults, the same bank-notes, the same cashier and clerks. The banking-house and the house of the cashier, which cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he bought for one hundred and twenty thousand. The stock, which he bought at four hundred and twenty, proved to be worth, on the winding up of the old bank, four hundred and thirty-four. Thus, by this operation, he extricated his property in England, invested it wisely in America, established a new business in place of one that could no longer be carried on, and saved the mercantile community from a considerable part of the loss and embarrassment which the total annihilation of the bank would have occasioned.