Girard, still fewer understood him.  He was considered mean, hard, avaricious.  If a rich man goes into a store to buy a yard of cloth, no one expects that he will give five dollars for it when the price is four.  But there is a universal impression that it is “handsome” in him to give higher wages than other people to those who serve him, to bestow gratuities upon them, and, especially, to give away endless sums in charity.  The truth is, however, that one of the duties which a rich man owes to society is to be careful not to disturb the law of supply and demand by giving more money for anything than a fair price, and not to encourage improvidence and servility by inconsiderate and profuse gifts.  Girard rescued his poor relations in France from want, and educated nieces and nephews in his own house; but his gifts to them were not proportioned to his own wealth, but to their circumstances.  His design evidently was to help them as much as would do them good, but not so much as to injure them as self-sustaining members of society.  And surely it was well for every clerk in his bank to know that all he had to expect from the rich Girard was only what he would have received if he had served another bank.  The money which in loose hands might have relaxed the arm of industry and the spirit of independence, which might have pampered and debased a retinue of menials, and drawn around the dispenser a crowd of cringing beggars and expectants, was invested in solid houses, which Girard’s books show yielded him a profit of three per cent, but which furnished to many families comfortable abodes at moderate rents.  To the most passionate entreaties of failing merchants for a loan to help them over a crisis, he was inflexibly deaf.  They thought it meanness.  But we can safely infer from Girard’s letters and conversation that he thought it an injury to the community to avert from a man of business the consequences of extravagance and folly, which, in his view, were the sole causes of failure.  If there was anything that Girard utterly despised and detested, it was that vicious mode of doing business which, together with extravagant living, causes seven business men in ten to fail every ten years.  We are enabled to state, however, on the best authority, that he was substantially just to those whom he employed, and considerately kind to his own kindred.  At least he meant to be kind; he did for them what he really thought was for their good.  To little children, and to them only, he was gracious and affectionate in manner.  He was never so happy as when he had a child to caress and play with.

After the peace of 1815, Girard began to consider what he should do with his millions after his death.  He was then sixty-five, but he expected and meant to live to a good age.  “The Russians,” he would say, when he was mixing his olla podrida of a Russian salad, “understand best how to eat and drink; and I am going to see how long, by following their customs, I can live.”  He