of young Girard.

When only nineteen, we find him in Philadelphia, driving a thrifty but
quiet trade in a little shop in Water Street. Shortly after opening this
store, his fancy was taken captive by a maiden of sixteen Summers, named
Mary, but familiarly called Polly, Lum. She was a shipwright's daughter,
a pretty brunette, who was in the habit of going to the neighboring
pump, barefooted, "with her rich, glossy, black hair hanging in
disheveled curls about her neck." Her modesty pleased him, her beauty
charmed him, and, after a few months of rude courtship, he was married
to her, in 1770.

His marriage, instead of carrying happiness into the home over which he
installed his beautiful bride, only embittered two lives. It was a union
of mere fancy on his side, and of self-interest on hers, not of genuine
affection. Their dispositions were not congenial. She was ignorant,
vulgar, slovenly. He was arbitrary, harsh, rude, imperious, unyielding.
How could their lives flow on evenly together? It was impossible. The
result was misery to both, and, as we shall see hereafter, the once
beautiful Polly Lum ended her days in a mad-house--a sad illustration of
the folly of premature, ill-assorted marriages.

Finding little at his fireside to move his heart, Girard gave his whole
soul to business, now trading to San Domingo and New Orleans, and then
in his store in Water Street. When the Revolutionary War began, it swept
his commercial ventures from the ocean, but he, still bent on gain and
indifferent as to the means of winning it, then opened a grocery, and
engaged in bottling cider and claret. When the British army occupied
Philadelphia, he moved this bottling business to Mount Holly, in New
Jersey, where he continued until the American flag again floated over
Independence Hall.

But times were hard and money scarce, and for awhile Girard added very
little to his means. Yet his keen eye was sharply watching for golden
opportunities, and his active mind busily thinking how to create or
improve them. In 1780, circumstances made trade with New Orleans and San
Domingo very profitable. He promptly engaged in it, and in two years
doubled his resources.

Peace being restored, Girard, full of faith in the future of his adopted
country, leased a block of stores for ten years at a very low rent. The
following year, while business still lay stunned by the blows it had
received during the war, he obtained a stipulation from his landlord