gaining money; that he made his very pleasures profitable to himself
in money gained, to his neighborhood in improved fruits and
vegetables; that he had no family to maintain and indulge; that he
held in utter aversion and contempt the costly and burdensome
ostentation of a great establishment, fine equipages, and a retinue of
servants; that he reduced himself to a money-making machine, run at
the minimum of expense;--and we have an explanation of his rapidly
acquired wealth, He used to boast, after he was a millionaire, of
wearing the same overcoat for fourteen winters; and one of his clerks,
who saw him every day for twenty years, declares that he never
remembered having seen him wear a new-looking garment but once. Let us
note, too, that he was an adept in the art of getting men to serve him
with devotion. He paid small salaries, and was never known in his life
to bestow a gratuity upon one who served him; but he knew how to make
his humblest clerk feel that the master's eye was upon him always.
Violent in his outbreaks of anger, his business letters are singularly
polite, and show consideration for the health and happiness of his
subordinates.

Legitimate commerce makes many men rich; but in Girard's day no man
gained by it ten millions of dollars. It was the war of 1812, which
suspended commerce, that made this merchant so enormously rich. In
1811, the charter of the old United States Bank expired; and the
casting-vote of Vice-President George Clinton negatived the bill for
rechartering it. When war was imminent, Girard had a million dollars
in the bank of Baring Brothers in London. This large sum, useless then
for purposes of commerce,--in peril, too, from the disturbed condition
of English finance,--he invested in United States stock and in stock
of the United States Bank, both being depreciated in England. Being
thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the charter having