Many feared, many served, but none loved this singular and lonely old
man. If there was among the very few who habitually conversed with him
one who understood and esteemed him, there was but one; and he was a
man of such abounding charity, that, like Uncle Toby, if he had heard
that the Devil was hopelessly damned, he would have said, "I am sorry
for it." Never was there a person more destitute than Girard of the
qualities which win the affection of others. His temper was violent,
his presence forbidding, his usual manner ungracious, his will
inflexible, his heart untender, his imagination dead. He was odious to
many of his fellow-citizens, who considered him the hardest and
meanest of men. He had lived among them for half a century, but he was
no more a Philadelphian in 1830 than in 1776. He still spoke with a
French accent, and accompanied his words with a French shrug and
French gesticulation. Surrounded with Christian churches which he had
helped to build, he remained a sturdy unbeliever, and possessed the
complete works of only one man, Voltaire. He made it a point of duty
to labor on Sunday, as a good example to others. He made no secret of
the fact, that he considered the idleness of Sunday an injury to the
people, moral and economical. He would have opened his bank on
Sundays, if any one would have come to it. For his part, he required
no rest, and would have none. He never travelled. He never attended
public assemblies or amusements. He had no affections to gratify, no
friends to visit, no curiosity to appease, no tastes to indulge. What
he once said of himself appeared to be true, that he rose in the
morning with but a single object, and that was to labor so hard all
day as to be able to sleep all night. The world was absolutely nothing
to him but a working-place. He scorned and scouted the opinion, that
old men should cease to labor, and should spend the evening of their
days in tranquillity. "No," he would say, "labor is the price of life,
its happiness, its everything; to rest is to rust; every man should
labor to the last hour of his ability." Such was Stephen Girard, the
richest man who ever lived in Pennsylvania.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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