driven by a black man, broke the silence of the deserted and grass-grown street.  It stopped before a frame house; 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 stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt, yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence.  Girard held round the waist the sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own; his long, damp, tangled hair mingled with Girard’s; his feet dragging helpless upon the pavement.  Thus he drew him to the carriage door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist.  Partly dragging, partly lifting, he succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in getting him into the vehicle.  He then entered it himself, closed the door, and the carriage drove away towards the hospital.

A man who can do such things at such a time may commit errors and cherish erroneous opinions, but the essence of that which makes the difference between a good man and a bad man must dwell within him.  Twice afterwards Philadelphia was visited by yellow-fever, in 1797 and 1798.  On both occasions, Girard took the lead, by personal exertion or gifts of money, in relieving the poor and the sick.  He had a singular taste for nursing the sick, though a sturdy unbeliever in medicine.  According to him, nature, not doctors, is the restorer,—­nature, aided by good nursing.  Thus, after the yellow-fever of 1798, 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 a day? and what will surprise you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little.  I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single person; but you will think with me, that in my quality of Philadelphia physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confreres has killed fewer than myself.”

It is not by nursing the sick, however, that men acquire colossal fortunes.  We revert, therefore, to the business career of this extraordinary man.  Girard, in the ancient and honorable acceptation of the term, was a merchant; i.e. a man who sent his own ships to foreign countries, and exchanged their products for those of his own.  Beginning in the West India trade, with one small schooner built with difficulty and managed with caution, he expanded his business as his capital increased, until he was the owner of a fleet of merchantmen, and brought home to Philadelphia the products of every clime.  Beginning with single