But the testamentary aim of the richest trio that ever lived in America was to escape this national trait of beneficence; to substitute the perpetuity of one's business monopoly or family trade; to struggle against any serious division of the enormous fortune, even at the cost of preferences among equal children; to spare not one dollar out of fifty millions for the public; to heap the gigantic hoard, save what for other legatees propriety demands, on some "chip of the old block" or business "bird of a feather." This purpose also influenced their lives. "Magnificence is the decency of the rich," but little magnificence marked the lives of those three rich New Yorkers. Powerful, self-willed, all-conquering they were, but hardly magnificent. Unprecedented and incredible thing in America, neither Stewart nor Vanderbilt left one poor dollar of his fifty or sixty millions to any municipal or charitable purpose. Filled with his posthumous business plans, neither cared for New York as Girard cared for Philadelphia and Hopkins for Baltimore. True, each of the Gotham triumvirate endowed in life an institution of public beneficence--Astor his library, Vanderbilt his college away in Tennessee, Stewart his hotel for women. It is further true that men who, like Vanderbilt and Stewart, give sure pay for many years to thousands of employees, are benefactors. But to do this, and then to leave besides some testamentary memorial to the city where one has heaped up his wealth, has hitherto been the aim of the rich men of America. Girard not only founded his orphan college, ornament and pride of Philadelphia, but left great sums to beautify and improve the city by removing wooden houses and widening thoroughfares. Stewart, scrupulously just in business dealings, deserves public gratitude as the apostle of "one price," and as the cash-selling reformer who protected prudent folk from the higher prices caused in trade by the allowances for bad debts; but, this apart, in the will of Stewart and the will of Stephen Girard, what a world-wide difference of public spirit! That one act of grace that might have tempered his forgetfulness toward New York--the gift of his picture gallery for public uses--even this act Stewart did not do. The contrast is startling between the bequests of an Astor, a Stewart, a Vanderbilt, and those of a Girard, a Peabody, and a Johns Hopkins. THE DUEL AND THE NEWSPAPERS.