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