From the close of the war to the end of his life, a period of sixteen years, Girard pursued the even tenor of his way, as keen and steady in the pursuit of wealth, and as careful in preserving it, as though his fortune were still insecure.  Why was this?  We should answer the question thus:  Because his defective education left him no other resource.  We frequently hear the “success” of such men as Astor and Girard adduced as evidence of the uselessness of early education.  On the contrary, it is precisely such men who prove its necessity; since, when they have conquered fortune, they know not how to avail themselves of its advantages.  When Franklin had, at the age of forty-two, won a moderate competence, he could turn from business to science, and from science to the public service, using money as a means to the noblest ends.  Strong-minded but unlettered men, like Girard, who cannot be idle, must needs plod on to the end, adding superfluous millions to their estates.  In Girard’s case, too, there was another cause of this entire devotion to business.  His domestic sorrows had estranged him from mankind, and driven him into himself.  Mr. Henry W. Arey, the very able and high-minded Secretary of Girard College, in whose custody are Girard’s papers, is convinced that it was not the love of money which kept him at work early and late to the last days of his life.

“No one,” he remarks,

“who has had access to his private papers, can fail to become impressed with the belief that these early disappointments furnish the true key to his entire character.  Originally of warm and generous impulses, the belief in childhood that he had not been given his share of the love and kindness which were extended to others changed the natural current of his feelings, and, acting on a warm and passionate temperament, alienated him from his home, his parents, and his friends.  And when in after time there were super-added the years of bitter anguish resulting from his unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more poignant by the necessity of concealment, and the consequent injustice of public sentiment, and marring all his cherished expectations, it may be readily understood why constant occupation became a necessity, and labor a pleasure.”

Girard himself confirms this opinion.  In one of his letters of 1820, to a friend in New Orleans, he says:—­

“I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family, that you are happy and in the possession of an honest fortune.  This is all that a wise man has the right to wish for.  As to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly occupied, and often passing the night without sleeping.  I am wrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with care.  I do not value fortune.  The love of labor is my highest ambition.  You perceive that your situation is a thousand times preferable to mine.”

In his lifetime, as we have remarked, few men loved