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 [New] 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.