The bequeathment of Stephen Girard, the wealthy American merchant, was of a different character. Girard was a native of Bordeaux. An orphan at an early age, he was put on board a ship as a cabin boy. He made his first voyage to North America when about ten or twelve years old. He had little education, and only a limited acquaintance with reading and writing. He worked hard. He gradually improved in means so that he was able to set up a store. Whilst living in Water Street, New York, he fell in love with Polly Luna, the daughter of a caulker. The father forbade the marriage. But Girard persevered, and at length he won and married Polly Lum. It proved a most unfortunate marriage. His wife had no sympathy with him; and he became cross, snappish, morose. He took to sea again; and at forty he commanded his own sloop, and was engaged in the coasting trade between New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.
Then he settled in Philadelphia, and became a merchant. He devoted his whole soul to his business; for he had determined to become rich. He practised the most rigid economy. He performed any work by which money could be made. He shut his heart against the blandishments of life. The desire for wealth seems to have possessed his soul. His life was one of unceasing labour. Remember, that Girard was unhappy at home. His nature might have been softened, had he been blessed with a happy wife. He led ten miserable years with her; and then she became insane. She lay for about twenty years in the Pennsylvania hospital, and died there.
Yet there was something more than hardness and harshness in Girard. There was a deep under-current of humanity in him. When the yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, in 1793, his better nature showed itself. The people were smitten to death by thousands. Nurses could not be found to attend the patients in the hospital. It was regarded as certain death to nurse the sick.
"Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor;
But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;
Only, alas I the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants,
Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless."
It was at this time, when many were stricken with fever, that Girard abandoned his business, and offered his services as superintendent of the public hospital. He had Peter Helm for his associate. Girard's business faculty immediately displayed itself. His powers of organization were immense, and the results of his work were soon observed. Order began to reign where everything had before been in confusion. Dirt was conquered by cleanliness. Where there had been wastefulness, there was now thriftiness. Where there had been neglect, there was unremitting attention. Girard saw that every case was properly attended to. He himself attended to the patients afflicted by the loathsome disease, ministered to the dying, and performed the last kind offices for the dead. At last the plague was stayed; and Girard and Helm returned to their ordinary occupations.
The visitors of the poor in Philadelphia placed the following minute on their books: "Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, members of the committee, commiserating the calamitous state to which the sick may probably be reduced for want of suitable persons to superintend the hospital, voluntarily offered their services for that benevolent employment, and excited a surprise and satisfaction that can be better conceived than expressed."
The results of Stephen Girard's industry and economy may be seen in Philadelphia—in the beautiful dwelling houses, row after row,—but more than all, in the magnificent marble edifice of Girard College. He left the greater part of his fortune for public purposes,—principally to erect and maintain a public library and a large orphanage. It might have been in regard to his own desolate condition, when cast an orphan amongst strangers and foreigners, that he devised his splendid charity for poor, forlorn, and fatherless children. One of the rooms in the college is singularly furnished. "Girard had directed that a suitable room was to be set apart for the preservation of his books and papers; but from excess of pious care, or dread of the next-of kin, all the plain homely man's effects were shovelled into this room. Here are his boxes and his bookcase, his gig and his gaiters, his pictures and his pottery; and in a bookcase, hanging with careless grace, are his braces—old homely knitted braces, telling their tale of simplicity and carefulness."[1]
[Footnote 1: Gentleman's Magazine, April. 1875. George Dawson on
"Niagara and Elsewhere.">[
One of the finest hospitals in London is that founded by Thomas Guy, the bookseller. He is said to have been a miser. At all events he must have been a thrifty and saving man. No foundation such as that of Guy's can be accomplished without thrift. Men who accomplish such things must deny themselves for the benefit of others. Thomas Guy appears early to have projected schemes of benevolence. He first built and endowed almshouses at Tamworth for fourteen poor men and women, with pensions for each occupant; and with a thoughtfulness becoming his vocation, he furnished them with a library. He had himself been educated at Tamworth, where he had doubtless seen hungry and homeless persons suffering from cleanness of teeth and the winter's rage; and the almshouses were his contribution for their relief. He was a bookseller in London at that time. Guy prospered, not so much by bookselling, as by buying and selling South Sea Stock. When the bubble burst, he did not hold a share: but he had realized a profit of several hundred thousand pounds. This sum he principally employed in building and endowing the hospital which bears his name. The building was roofed in before his death, in 1724.
Scotch benefactors for the most part leave their savings for the purpose of founding hospitals for educational purposes. There was first the Heriot's Hospital, founded in Edinburgh by George Heriot, the goldsmith of James I., for maintaining and educating a hundred and eighty boys. But the property of the hospital having increased in value—the New Town of Edinburgh being for the most part built on George Heriot's land—the operations of the charity have been greatly extended; as many as four thousand boys and girls being now educated free of expense, in different parts of the city. There are also the George Watson's Hospital, the John Watson's Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, two Maiden Hospitals, the Cauven's Hospital, the Donaldson's Hospital, the Stewart's Hospital, and the splendid Fettes College (recently opened),—all founded by Scottish benefactors for the ordinary education of boys and girls, and also for their higher education. Edinburgh may well be called the City of Educational Endowments. There is also the Madras College, at St. Andrews, founded by the late Andrew Bell, D.D.; the Dollar Institution, founded by John Macrat; and the Dick Bequest, for elevating the character and position of the parochial schools and schoolmasters, in the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray. The effects of this last bequest have been most salutary. It has raised the character of the education given in the public schools, and the results have been frequently observed at Cambridge, where men from the northern counties have taken high honours in all departments of learning.