Republicans, Girard was a Republican of the radical school. He
remembered assisting to raise a liberty-pole in the Presidency of John
Adams; and he was one of Mr. Jefferson's most uncompromising adherents
at a time when men of substance were seldom found in the ranks of the
Democrats. As long as he lived, he held the name of Thomas Jefferson
in veneration.

We have now to contemplate this cold, close, ungainly, ungracious man
in a new character. We are to see that a man may seem indifferent to
the woes of individuals, but perform sublime acts of devotion to a
community. We are to observe that there are men of sterling but
peculiar metal, who only shine when the furnace of general affliction
is hottest. In 1793, the malignant yellow-fever desolated
Philadelphia. The consternation of the people cannot be conceived by
readers of the present day, because we cannot conceive of the
ignorance which then prevailed respecting the laws of contagion,
because we have lost in some degree the habit of panic, and because no
kind of horror can be as novel to us as the yellow-fever was to the
people of Philadelphia in 1793. One half of the population fled. Those
who remained left their houses only when compelled. Most of the
churches, the great Coffee-House, the Library, were closed. Of four
daily newspapers, only one continued to be published. Some people
constantly smoked tobacco,--even women and children, did so; others
chewed garlic; others exploded gunpowder; others burned nitre or
sprinkled vinegar; many assiduously whitewashed every surface within
their reach; some carried tarred rope in their hands, or bags of
camphor round their necks; others never ventured abroad without a
handkerchief or a sponge wet with vinegar at their noses. No one
ventured to shake hands. Friends who met in the streets gave each
other a wide berth, eyed one another askance, exchanged nods, and
strode on. It was a custom to walk in the middle of the street, to get
as far from the houses as possible. Many of the sick died without
help, and the dead were buried without ceremony. The horrid silence of
the streets was broken only by the tread of litter-bearers and the
awful rumble of the dead-wagon. Whole families perished,--perished
without assistance, their fate unknown to their neighbors. Money was
powerless to buy attendance for the operation of all ordinary motives
was suspended. From the 1st of August to the 9th of November, in a
population of twenty