Albert S. Bickmore of the American Museum of Natural History, Eighth
Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street, Central Park, New York. In 1869, when
the Museum was founded, the teachers of the public schools were required
to give object-lessons on animals, plants, human anatomy, and
physiology, and came to the Museum to the curator of the department of
ethnology, Professor Bickmore, for assistance. His lectures, given on
Saturday forenoons, illustrated by the stereopticon, were upon the
body,--the muscular system, nervous system, etc.; the mineral
kingdom,--granite, marble, coal, petroleum, iron, etc.; the vegetable
kingdom,--evergreens, oaks, elms, etc.; the animal kingdom,--the sea,
corals, oysters, butterflies, bees, ants, etc.; physical geography,--the
Mississippi Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Mexico, Egypt, Greece,
Italy, West Indies, etc.; zoölogy,--fishes, reptiles, and birds, the
whale, dogs, seals, lions, monkeys, etc.
These lectures became so popular and helpful that the trustees of the
Museum hired Chickering Hall for some of the courses, which were
attended by over thirteen hundred teachers each week. Professor
Bickmore also gives free illustrated lectures to the people on the
afternoons of legal holidays at the Museum, under the auspices of the
State Department of Public Instruction.
New York State has done a thing which might well be copied in other
States. Each normal school of the State, and each city and village
superintendent of schools, may be provided with a stereopticon, all
needed lantern slides, and the printed lectures of Professor Bickmore,
for use before the schools. In this way children have object-lessons
which they never forget.
The Museum, in co-operation with the Board of Education of the city of
New York, is providing free lectures for the people at the Museum on
Saturday evenings, by various lecturers. The Board, under the direction
of Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, is doing good work in its free illustrated
lectures for the people in many portions of the city. These are given in
the evenings, and often at the grammar-school buildings, a good use to
which to put them. Such subjects are chosen as The Navy in the Civil
War, The Progress of the Telegraph, Life in the Arctic Regions,
Emergencies and How to Meet Them (by some physician), Iron and Steel
Ship-building, The Care of the Eyes and Teeth, Burns and Scotland,
Andrew Jackson, etc. Rich and poor are alike welcome to the lectures,
and all classes are present.
A city or State that does such work for the people will reap a
hundred-fold in coming generations.
STEPHEN GIRARD
AND HIS COLLEGE FOR ORPHANS.
Near the city of Bordeaux, France, on May 20, 1750, the eldest son of
Pierre Girard and his wife, Anne Marie Lafargue, was born. The family
were well-to-do; and Pierre was knighted by Louis XV. for bravery on
board the squadron at Brest, in 1744, when France and England were at
war. The king gave Pierre Girard his own sword, which Pierre at his
death ordered to be placed in his coffin, and it was buried with him.
Although the Girard family were devoted to the sea, Pierre wished to
have his boys become professional men; and this might have been the case
with the eldest son, Stephen, had not an accident changed his life.
When the boy was eight years old, his right eye was destroyed. Some wet
oyster-shells were thrown upon a bonfire, and the heat breaking the
shells, a ragged piece flew into the eye. To make the calamity worse,
his playmates ridiculed his appearance with one eye closed; and he
became sensitive, and disinclined to play with any one save his brother
Jean.
He was a grave and dignified lad, inclined to be domineering, and of a
quick temper. His mother tried to teach him self-control, and had she
lived, would doubtless have softened his nature; but a second mother
coming into the home, who had several children of her own, the effect
upon Stephen was disastrous. She seems not to have understood his
nature; and when he rebelled, the father sided with the new love, and
bade his son submit, or find a home as best he could.
"I will leave your house," replied the passionate boy, hurt in feelings
as well as angered. "Give me a venture on any ship that sails from
Bordeaux, and I will go at once, where you shall never see me again."
A business acquaintance, Captain Jean Courteau, was about to sail to San
Domingo in the West Indies. Pierre Girard gave his son sixteen thousand
livres, about three thousand dollars; and the lad of fourteen, small for
his age, went out into the world as a cabin-boy, to try his fortune.
If his mother had been alive he would have been homesick, but as matters
were at present the Girard house could not be a home to him. His first
voyage lasted ten months; the three thousand dollars had gained him some
money, and the trip had made him in love with the sea. He returned for a
brief time to his brothers and sisters, and then made five other
voyages, having attained the rank of lieutenant of the vessel.
When he was twenty-three, he was given authority to act as "captain of a
merchant vessel," and sailed away from Bordeaux forever. After stopping
at St. Marc's in the island of San Domingo, young Girard sailed for New
York, which he reached in July, 1774. With shrewd business ability he
disposed of the articles brought in his ship, and in so doing attracted
the interest of a prosperous merchant, Mr. Thomas Randall, who was
engaged in trade with New Orleans and the West Indies.
Mr. Randall asked the energetic young Frenchman to take the position of
first officer in his ship L'Aimable Louise. This resulted so
satisfactorily that Girard was taken into partnership, and became master
of the vessel in her trade with New Orleans and the West Indies.
After nearly two years, in May, 1776, Girard was returning from the West
Indies, and in a fog and storm at sea found himself in Delaware Bay, and
learned that a British fleet was outside. The pilot, who had come in
answer to the small cannon fired from Girard's ship, advised against his
going to New York, as he would surely be captured, the Revolutionary War
having begun. As he had no American money with him, a Philadelphia
gentleman who came with the pilot loaned him five dollars. This
five-dollar loan proved a blessing to the Quaker City, when in after
years she received millions from the merchant who came by accident into
her borders.
Captain Girard sold his interest in L'Aimable Louise, and opened a small
store on Water Street, putting into it his cargo from the West Indies.
He hoped to go to sea again as soon as the war should be over, and
conferred with Mr. Lum, a plain shipbuilder near him on Water Street,
about building a ship for him. Mr. Lum had an unusually beautiful
daughter, Mary, a girl of sixteen, with black hair and eyes, and very
fair complexion. Though eleven years older than Mary, Stephen Girard
fell in love with her, and was married to her, June 6, 1777, before his
family could object, as they soon did strenuously, when they learned
that she was poor and below him in social rank.
About three years after the marriage, Jean visited his brother Stephen
in America, and seems to have appreciated the beautiful and modest girl
to whom the family were so opposed. Henry Atlee Ingram, LL.B., in his
life of Girard, quotes several letters from Jean after he had returned
to France, or when at Cape François, San Domingo: "Be so kind as to
assure my dear sister-in-law of my true affection.... Say a thousand
kind things to her for me, and assure her of my unalterable
friendship.... Thousands and thousands of friendly wishes to your dear
wife. Say to her that if anything from here would give her pleasure, to
ask me for it. I will do everything in the world to prove to her my
attachment.... I send by Derussy the jar which your lovely wife filled
for me with gherkins, full of an excellent guava jelly for you people,
besides two orange-trees. He has promised me to take care of them. I
hope he will, and embrace, as well as you, my ever dear Mary."
Three or four months after his marriage, Lord Howe having threatened the
city, Mr. Girard took his young wife to Mount Holly, N.J., to a little
farm of five or six acres which he had purchased the previous year for
five hundred dollars. Here they lived in a one-story-and-a-half frame
house for over a year, when they returned to Philadelphia and he resumed
his business. He had decided already to become a citizen of the
Republic, and took the oath of allegiance, Oct. 27, 1778.
Mr. Lum at once began to build the sloop which Mr. Girard was planning
when he first met Mary, and she was named the Water-Witch. Until she
was shipwrecked, five or six years later, Mr. Girard believed she could
never cause him loss. Already he was worth over one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, made by his own energy, prudence, and ability; but he
lived with great simplicity, and was accumulating wealth rapidly. In
1784 he built his second vessel, named, in compliment to Jean, the Two
Brothers.
The next year, 1785, when he was thirty-five years old, the great sorrow
of his life came upon him. The beautiful wife, only a little beyond her
teens, became melancholy, and then hopelessly insane. Mr. Ingram
believes the eight years of Mary Girard's married life were happy years,
though the contrary has been stated. Without doubt Mr. Girard was very
fond of her, though his unbending will and temper, and the ignoring of
her relatives, were not calculated to make any woman continuously happy.
Evidently Jean, who had lived in the family, thought no blame attached
to his brother; for he wrote from Cape François: "It is impossible to
express to you what I felt at such news. I do truly pity the frightful
state I imagine you to be in, above all, knowing the regard and love you
bear your wife.... Conquer your grief, and show yourself by that worthy
of being a man; for, dear friend, when one has nothing with which to
reproach one's self, no blow, whatsoever it may be, should crush him."
After a period of rest, Mrs. Girard seemed to recover. Stephen and Jean
formed a partnership, and the former sailed to the Mediterranean on
business for the firm. After three years the partnership was dissolved
by mutual consent, Stephen preferring to transact business alone. As
soon as these matters were settled, he and his wife were to take a
journey to France, which country she had long been anxious to visit.
Probably the family would then see for themselves that the unassuming
girl made an amiable, sensible wife for their eldest son.
In the midst of preparations, the despondency again returned; and by the
advice of physicians, Mrs. Girard was taken to the Pennsylvania
Hospital, at Eighth and Spruce Streets, Aug. 31, 1790, where she
remained till her death in 1815, insane for over twenty-five years. She
retained much of the beauty of her girlhood, lived on the first floor of
the hospital in large rooms, had the freedom of the grounds, and was
"always sitting in the sunlight." Her mind became almost a blank; and
when the housekeeper came bringing the little daughters of Jean, Mrs.
Girard scarcely recognized her.
To add still more to Mr. Girard's sorrow, after his wife had been at the
hospital several months, on March 3, 1791, a daughter was born to her,
who was named for the mother, Mary Girard. The infant was taken into the
country to be cared for, and lived but a few months. It was buried in
the graveyard of the parish church.
Bereft of his only child, his home desolate, Mr. Girard plunged more
than ever into the whirl of business. He built six large ships, naming
some of them after his favorite authors,--Voltaire, Helvetius,
Montesquieu, Rousseau, Good Friends, and North America,--to trade with
China and India, and other Eastern countries. He would send grain and
cotton to Bordeaux, where, after unloading, his ships would reload with
fruit and wine for St. Petersburg. There they would dispose of their
cargo, and take on hemp and iron for Amsterdam. From there they would go
to Calcutta and Canton, and return, laden with tea and silks, to
Philadelphia.
Little was known about the quiet, taciturn Frenchman; but every one
supposed he was becoming very rich, which was the truth. He was not
always successful. He says in one of his letters, "We are all the
subjects of what you call 'reverses of fortune.' The great secret is to
make good use of fortune, and when reverses come, receive them with
_sang froid_, and by redoubled activity and economy endeavor to repair
them." His ship Montesquieu, from Canton, China, arrived within the
capes of Delaware, March 26, 1813, not having heard of the war between
America and England, and was captured with her valuable cargo, the
fruits of the two years' voyage. The ship was valued at $20,000, and the
cargo over $164,000. He immediately tried to ransom her, and did so with
$180,000 in coin. When her cargo was sold, the sales amounted to nearly
$500,000, so that Girard's quickness and good sense, in spite of the
ransom, brought him large gains. The teas were sold for over two dollars
a pound, on account of their scarcity from the war.
Mr. Girard rose early and worked late. He spent little on clothes or for
daily needs. He evidently did not care simply to make money; for he
wrote his friend Duplessis at New Orleans: "I do not value fortune. The
love of labor is my highest ambition.... I observe with pleasure that
you have a numerous family, that you are happy in the possession of an
honest fortune. This is all that a wise man has a 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."
To another he wrote: "When I rise in the morning my only effort is to
labor so hard during the day that when the night comes I may be enabled
to sleep soundly." He had the same strong will as in his boyhood, but he
usually controlled his temper. He kept his business to himself, and
would not permit his clerks to gossip about his affairs. They had to be
men of correct habits while in his employ. Having some suspicion of one
of the officers of his ship Voltaire, he wrote to Captain Bowen: "I
desire you not to permit a drunken or immoral man to remain on board of
your ship. Whenever such a man makes disturbance, or is disagreeable to
the rest of the crew, discharge him whenever you have the opportunity.
And if any of my apprentices should not conduct themselves properly, I
authorize you to correct them as I would myself. My intention being that
they shall learn their business, so after they are free they may be
useful to themselves and their country."
Mr. Girard gave minute instructions to all his employees, with the
direction that they were to "break owners, not orders." Miss Louise
Stockton, in "A Sylvan City, or Quaint Corners in Philadelphia," tells
the following incident, illustrative of Mr. Girard's inflexible rule:
"He once sent a young supercargo with two ships on a two years' voyage.
He was to go first to London, then to Amsterdam, and so from port to
port, selling and buying, until at last he was to go to Mocha, buy
coffee, and turn back. At London, however, the young fellow was charged
by the Barings not to go to Mocha, or he would fall into the hands of
pirates; at Amsterdam they told him the same thing. Everywhere the
caution was repeated; but he sailed on until he came to the last port
before Mocha. Here he was consigned to a merchant who had been an
apprentice to Girard in Philadelphia; and he, too, told him he must not
dare venture near the Red Sea.
"The supercargo was now in a dilemma. On one side was his master's
order; on the other, two vessels, a valuable cargo, and a large sum of
money. The merchant knew Girard's peculiarities as well as the
supercargo did; but he thought the rule to "break owners, not orders"
might this time be governed by discretion. 'You'll not only lose all you
have made,' he said, 'but you'll never go home to justify yourself.'
"The young man reflected. After all, the object of his voyages was to
get coffee; and there was no danger in going to Java, so he turned his
prow, and away he sailed to the Chinese seas. He bought coffee at four
dollars a sack, and sold it in Amsterdam at a most enormous advance, and
then went back to Philadelphia in good order, with large profits, sure
of approval. Soon after he entered the counting-room Girard came in. He
looked at the young fellow from under his bushy brows, and his one eye
gleamed with resentment. He did not greet him, nor welcome him, nor
congratulate him, but, shaking his angry hand, cried, 'What for you not
go to Mocha, sir?' And for the moment the supercargo wished he had. But
this was all Girard ever said on the subject. He rarely scolded his
employees. He might express his opinion by cutting down a salary, and
when a man did not suit him he dismissed him."
When one of Girard's bookkeepers, Stephen Simpson, apparently with
little or no provocation, assaulted a fellow bookkeeper, injuring him so
severely about the head that the man was unable to leave his home for
more than a week, Girard simply laid a letter on Simpson's desk the next
morning, reducing his salary from fifteen hundred dollars to one
thousand per annum. The clerk was very angry, but did not give up his
situation. When an errand-boy was caught in the act of stealing small
sums of money from the counting-house, Mr. Girard put a more intricate
lock on the money-drawer, and made no comment. The boy was sorry for his
conduct, and gave no further occasion for complaint.
Girard believed in labor as a necessity for every human being. He used
to say, "No man shall be a gentleman on _my_ money." If he had a son he
should labor. He said, "If I should leave him twenty thousand dollars,
he would be lazy or turn gambler." Mr. Ingram tells an amusing incident
of an Irishman who applied to Mr. Girard for work. "Engaging the man for
a whole day, he directed the removal from one side of his yard to the
other of a pile of bricks, which had been stored there awaiting some
building operations; and this task, which consumed several hours, being
completed, he was accosted by the Irishman to know what should be done
next. 'Why, have you finished that already?' said Girard; 'I thought it
would take all day to do that. Well, just move them all back again where
you took them from; that will use up the rest of the day;' and upon the
astonished Irishman's flat refusal to perform such fruitless labor, he
was promptly paid and discharged, Girard saying at the same time, in a
rather aggrieved manner, 'I certainly understood you to say that you
wanted _any_ kind of work.'"
Absorbed as Mr. Girard was in his business, cold and unapproachable as
he seemed to the people of Philadelphia, he had noble qualities, which
showed themselves in the hour of need. In the latter part of July, 1793,
yellow fever in its most fatal form broke out in Water Street, within a
square of Mr. Girard's residence. The city was soon in a panic. Most of
the public offices were closed, the churches were shut up, and people
fled from the city whenever it was possible to do so. Corpses were taken
to the grave on the shafts of a chaise driven by a negro, unattended,
and without ceremony.
"Many never walked in the footpath, but went in the middle of the
streets, to avoid being infected in passing houses wherein people had
died. Acquaintances and friends avoided each other in the streets, and
only signified their regard by a cold nod. The old custom of shaking
hands fell into such disuse that many shrank back with affright at even
the offer of a hand. The death-calls echoed through the silent,
grass-grown streets; and at night the watcher would hear at his
neighbor's door the cry, 'Bring out your dead!' and the dead were
brought. Unwept over, unprayed for, they were wrapped in the sheet in
which they died, and were hurried into a box, and thrown into a great
pit, the rich and the poor together."
"Authentic cases are recorded," says Henry W. Arey in his "Girard
College and its Founder," "where parent and child and husband and wife
died deserted and alone, for want of a little care from the hands of
absent kindred."
In the midst of this dreadful plague an anonymous call for volunteer aid
appeared in the _Federal Gazette_, the only paper which continued to be
published. All but three of the "Visitors of the Poor" had died, or had
fled from the city. The hospital at Bush Hill needed some one to bring
order out of chaos, and cleanliness out of filth. Two men volunteered to
do this work, which meant probable death. To the amazement of all, one
of these was the rich and reticent foreigner, Stephen Girard. The other
man was Peter Helm. The former took the interior of the hospital under
his charge. For two months Mr. Girard spent from six to eight hours
daily in the hospital, and the rest of the time helped to remove the
sick and the dead from the infected districts round about. He wrote to a
friend in Baltimore: "The deplorable situations to which fright and
sickness have reduced the inhabitants of our city demand succor from
those who do not fear death, or who at least do not see any risk in the
epidemic which now prevails here. This will occupy me for some time; and
if I have the misfortune to succumb, I will have at least the
satisfaction to have performed a duty which we all owe to each other."
Mr. Ingram quotes from the _United States Gazette_ of Jan. 13, 1832, the
account of Girard at this time, witnessed by a merchant who was hurrying
by with a camphor-saturated handkerchief pressed to his mouth: "A
carriage, rapidly driven by a black servant, broke the silence of the
deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame house in
Farmer's Row, the very hotbed of the pestilence; and the driver, first
having bound a handkerchief over his mouth, opened the door of the
carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. A short, thick-set man
stepped from the coach, and entered the house.
"In a minute or two the observer, who stood at a safe distance watching
the proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the
visitor emerge, supporting, with extreme difficulty, a tall, gaunt,
yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. His arm was around the waist of
the sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own, his long, damp,
tangled hair mingling with his benefactor's, his feet dragging helpless
upon the pavement. Thus, partly dragging, partly lifted, he was drawn to
the carriage door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle, far
from offering to assist. After a long and severe exertion, the well man
succeeded in getting the fever-stricken patient into the vehicle, and
then entering it himself, the door was closed, and the carriage drove
away to the hospital, the merchant having recognized in the man who thus
risked his life for another, the foreigner, Stephen Girard."
Twice after this, in 1797 and 1798, when the yellow fever again appeared
in Philadelphia, Mr. Girard gave his time and money to the sick and the
poor.
In January, 1799, he wrote to a friend in France: "During all this
frightful time I have constantly remained in the city, and without
neglecting my public duties, I have played a part which will make you
smile. Would you believe it, my friend, that I have visited as many as
fifteen sick people in one day, and what will surprise you still more,
I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little."
Busy, as a mariner, merchant, and helper of the sick and the poor, Mr.
Girard found time to aid the Republic, to which he had become ardently
attached. Besides serving for several terms in the City Council, and as
Warden of the Port for twenty-two years, during the war of 1812 he
rendered valuable financial aid. In 1810 Mr. Girard, having about one
million dollars in the hands of Baring Bros. & Co., London, ordered the
whole of it to be used in buying stock and shares of the Bank of the
United States. When the charter of the bank expired in 1811, Mr. Girard
purchased the whole outfit, and opened "The Bank of Stephen Girard,"
with a capital of one million two hundred thousand dollars. About this
time, 1811, an attempt was made by two men to kidnap Mr. Girard by
enticing him into a house to buy goods, then seize him, and carry him to
a small ship in the Delaware, where he would be confined till he had
paid the money which they demanded. The plot was discovered. After the
men were arrested, and in prison for several months, one was declared
insane, and the other was acquitted on the ground of comparative
ignorance of the plot.