ut in Philadelphia, in 1793, his better nature showed itself. The
people were smitten to death by thousands. Nurses could not be found to
attend the patients in the hospital. It was regarded as certain death to
nurse the sick.

"Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor;
But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger;
Only, alas I the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants,
Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless."

It was at this time, when many were stricken with fever, that Girard
abandoned his business, and offered his services as superintendent of
the public hospital. He had Peter Helm for his associate. Girard's
business faculty immediately displayed itself. His powers of
organization were immense, and the results of his work were soon
observed. Order began to reign where everything had before been in
confusion. Dirt was conquered by cleanliness. Where there had been
wastefulness, there was now thriftiness. Where there had been neglect,
there was unremitting attention. Girard saw that every case was properly
attended to. He himself attended to the patients afflicted by the
loathsome disease, ministered to the dying, and performed the last kind
offices for the dead. At last the plague was stayed; and Girard and Helm
returned to their ordinary occupations.

The visitors of the poor in Philadelphia placed the following minute on
their books: "Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, members of the committee,
commiserating the calamitous state to which the sick may probably be
reduced for want of suitable persons to superintend the hospital,
voluntarily offered their services for that benevolent employment, and
excited a surprise and satisfaction that can be better conceived than
expressed."

The results of Stephen Girard's industry and economy may be seen in
Philadelphia--in the beautiful dwelling houses, row after row,--but more
than all, in the magnificent marble edifice of Girard College. He left
the greater part of his fortune for public purposes,--principally to
erect and maintain a public library and a large orphanage. It might have
been in regard to his own desolate condition, when cast an orphan
amongst strangers and foreigners, that he devised his splendid charity
for poor, forlorn, and fatherless children. One of the rooms in the
college is singularly furnished. "Girard had directed that a suitable
room was to be set apart for the preservation of his books an