For twenty years the remains reposed undisturbed where they had been laid in the churchyard of the Holy Trinity Church; when, the Girard College having been completed, it was resolved that the remains of the donor should be transferred to the marble sarcophagus provided in its vestibule. This was done with appropriate ceremonies on September 30, 1851.
Girard’s great ambition was, first, success; and this attained, the longing of mankind to leave a shining memory merged his purpose in the establishment of what was to him that fairest of Utopias—the simple tradition of a citizen. A citizen whose public duties ended not with the State, and whose benefactions were not limited to the rescue or advancement of its interests alone, but whose charities broadened beyond the limits of duty or the boundaries of an individual life, to stretch over long reaches of the future, enriching thousands of poor children in his beloved city yet unborn. His life shows clearly why he worked, as his death showed clearly the fixed object of his labor in acquisition. While he was forward with an apparent disregard of self, to expose his life in behalf of others in the midst of pestilence, to aid the internal improvements of the country, and to promote its commercial prosperity by all the means within his power, he yet had more ambitious designs. He wished to hand himself down to immortality by the only mode that was practicable for a man in his position, and he accomplished precisely that which was the grand aim of his life. He wrote his epitaph in those extensive and magnificent blocks and squares which adorn the streets of his adopted city, in the public works and eleemosynary establishments of his adopted State, and erected his own monument and embodied his own principles in a marble-roofed palace. Yet, splendid as is the structure which stands above his remains, the most perfect model of architecture in the New World, it yields in beauty to the moral monument. The benefactor sleeps among the orphan poor whom his bounty is constantly educating.
“Thus, forever present, unseen but felt, he daily stretches forth his invisible hands to lead some friendless child from ignorance to usefulness. And when, in the fullness of time, many homes have been made happy, many orphans have been fed, clothed and educated, and many men made useful to their country and themselves, each happy home or rescued child or useful citizen will be a living monument to perpetuate the name and embalm the memory of the ‘Mariner and Merchant.’”
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
OF
CITY TRUSTS,
1889.
W. HEYWARD DRAYTON, President,
Ex-Officio Member of all Standing Committees.