fortune. This is all that a wise man has the right to wish
for. As to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly
occupied, and often passing the night without sleeping. I am
wrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out with
care. I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my
highest ambition. You perceive that your situation is a
thousand times preferable to mine."

In his lifetime, as we have remarked, few men loved Girard, still
fewer understood him. He was considered mean, hard, avaricious. If a
rich man goes into a store to buy a yard of cloth, no one expects that
he will give five dollars for it when the price is four. But there is
a universal impression that it is "handsome" in him to give higher
wages than other people to those who serve him, to bestow gratuities
upon them, and, especially, to give away endless sums in charity. The
truth is, however, that one of the duties which a rich man owes to
society is to be careful _not_ to disturb the law of supply and demand
by giving more money for anything than a fair price, and _not_ to
encourage improvidence and servility by inconsiderate and profuse
gifts. Girard rescued his poor relations in France from want, and
educated nieces and nephews in his own house; but his gifts to them
were not proportioned to his own wealth, but to their circumstances.
His design evidently was to help them as much as would do them good,
but not so much as to injure them as self-sustaining members of
society. And surely it was well for every clerk in his bank to know
that all he had to expect from the rich Girard was only what he would
have received if he had served another bank. The money which in loose
hands might have relaxed the arm of industry and the spirit of
independence, which might have pampered and debased a retinue of
menials, and drawn around the dispenser a crowd of cringing beggars
and expectants, was invested in solid houses, which Girard's books
show yielded him a profit of three per cent, but which furnished to
many families comfortable abodes at moderate rents. To the most
passionate entreaties of failing merchants for a loan to help them
over a crisis, he was inflexibly deaf. They thought it meanness. But
we can safely infer from Girard's letters and conversation that he
thought it an injury to the community to avert from a man of business
the consequences of extravagance and folly, which, in his view, were
the sole caus