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.