is way, as keen and steady in
the pursuit of wealth, and as careful in preserving it, as though his
fortune were still insecure. Why was this? We should answer the
question thus: Because his defective education left him no other
resource. We frequently hear the "success" of such men as Astor and
Girard adduced as evidence of the uselessness of early education. On
the contrary, it is precisely such men who prove its necessity; since,
when they have conquered fortune, they know not how to avail
themselves of its advantages. When Franklin had, at the age of
forty-two, won a moderate competence, he could turn from business to
science, and from science to the public service, using money as a
means to the noblest ends. Strong-minded but unlettered men, like
Girard, who cannot be idle, must needs plod on to the end, adding
superfluous millions to their estates. In Girard's case, too, there
was another cause of this entire devotion to business. His domestic
sorrows had estranged him from mankind, and driven him into himself.
Mr. Henry W. Arey, the very able and high-minded Secretary of Girard
College, in whose custody are Girard's papers, is convinced that it
was not the love of money which kept him at work early and late to the
last days of his life.

"No one," he remarks,

"who has had access to his private papers, can fail to
become impressed with the belief that these early
disappointments furnish the true key to his entire
character. Originally of warm and generous impulses, the
belief in childhood that he had not been given his share of
the love and kindness which were extended to others changed
the natural current of his feelings, and, acting on a warm
and passionate temperament, alienated him from his home, his
parents, and his friends. And when in after time there were
super-added the years of bitter anguish resulting from his
unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more
poignant by the necessity of concealment, and the consequent
injustice of public sentiment, and marring all his cherished
expectations, it may be readily understood why constant
occupation became a necessity, and labor a pleasure."

Girard himself confirms this opinion. In one of his letters of 1820,
to a friend in New Orleans, he says:--

"I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family,
that you are happy and in the possession of an honest