EARLY AMERICAN FINANCIERS 407 



the flavor of Antwerp and Rubens, where her father was 

 consul. She died in a Saratoga hotel in 1857. Her effects 

 are to be seen in the library called for her and left by her 

 bookworm husband, James Rush. They apparently burned 

 out the fires of congeniality in foreign travel, and resolved 

 to respect each other as a Quaker solemnity. 



Stephen Girard removed from New York to Philadelphia 

 the year before he married, in 1770, a servant girl. He di- 

 vorced her, it is said, for infidelity, and it is also said that for 

 a like cause James Lick ran away from Philadelphia and made 

 a stake in Chile. 



The female sex often points the moral of "Lucky in love, 

 unlucky at cards." 



Girard kept a cider grocery and sold claret to soldiers in 

 the revolution, and after it was over went into the San 

 Domingo trade. His wife went to the lunatic aslyum in 1790 

 for twenty five years. He was a one eyed man. His wife 

 had a child seven months after she went to the asylum. 

 Girard possibly reaped treasure in the San Domingo massa- 

 cres. He named his ships after the French philosophers 

 Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvetius, and Montesquieu, to whom 

 the orphans probably owe Girard college. The unbeliever 

 astonished Philadelphia in the yellow fever by taking personal 

 custody of the chief hospital, but he may have been familiar 

 with the fever in the West Indies. He equally contemned 

 doctors and clergy, respected the cents and let the dollars 

 respect themselves, wore out his old clothes but fed well, and 

 like Hopkins, Peabody and other philanthropists, made 

 transient love no expensive thing. He swore like a jack 

 pirate. When he frequently gave to churches it was only to 

 improve the city. To young Baring, the London banker, who 

 rode five miles to cry: "Mr. Girard, the Voltaire has arrived 

 safe," he cried, "my ships always come safe; I am busy with 

 my hay." Girard's bank, established when he was 62, was 

 the result of the scoundrelism of the politicians in congress, 

 led by the vice-president, George Clinton, in wiping out the 

 first United States bank. The politicians of our time would 

 do well to go to the library of congress and get the little vol- 

 ume of Stephen Simpson. I am now consulting in my library 



