IRARD AND HIS COLLEGE.
Within the memory of many persons still alive, "old Girard," as the
famous banker was usually styled, a short, stout, brisk old gentleman,
used to walk, in his swift, awkward way, the streets of the lower part
of Philadelphia. Though everything about him indicated that he had
very little in common with his fellow-citizens, he was the marked man
of the city for more than a generation. His aspect was rather
insignificant and quite unprepossessing. His dress was old-fashioned
and shabby; and he wore the pig-tail, the white neck-cloth, the
wide-brimmed hat, and the large-skirted coat of the last century. He
was blind of one eye; and though his bushy eyebrows gave some
character to his countenance, it was curiously devoid of expression.
He had also the absent look of a man who either had no thoughts or was
absorbed in thought; and he shuffled along on his enormous feet,
looking neither to the right nor to the left. There was always a
certain look of the old mariner about him, though he had been fifty
years an inhabitant of the town. When he rode it was in the plainest,
least comfortable gig in Philadelphia, drawn by an ancient and
ill-formed horse, driven always by the master's own hand at a good
pace. He chose still to live where he had lived for fifty years, in
Water Street, close to the wharves, in a small and inconvenient house,
darkened by tall storehouses, amid the bustle, the noise, and the
odors of commerce. His sole pleasure was to visit once a day a little
farm which he possessed a few miles out of town, where he was wont to
take off his coat, roll up his shirt-sleeves, and personally labor in
the field and in the barn, hoeing corn, pruning trees, tossing hay,
and not disdaining even to assist in butchering the animals which he
raised for market. It was no mere ornamental or experimental farm. He
made it pay. All of its produce was carefully, nay, scrupulously
husbanded, sold, recorded, and accounted for. He loved his grapes, his
plums, his pigs, and especially his rare breed of Canary-birds; but
the people of Philadelphia had the full benefit of their increase,--at
the highest market rates.
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 hop
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