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