Brave Men and Women Part 18

"I was hearing this account," continued the corporal, "when the youth came into the kitchen to order the thin toast the landlord spoke of; 'but I will do it for my father myself,' said the youth. 'Pray let me save you the trouble, young gentleman,' said I, taking up a fork for the purpose, and offering him my chair to sit down upon by the fire, whilst I did it. 'I believe, sir,' said he, very modestly, 'I can please him best myself.' 'I am sure,' said I, 'his honor will not like the toast the worse for being toasted by an old soldier.' The youth took hold of my hand and instantly burst into tears."

"Poor youth," said my uncle Toby, "he has been bred up from an infant in the army, and the name of a soldier, Trim, sounded in his ears like the name of a friend; I wish I had him here."

"I never, in the longest march," said the corporal, "had so great a mind to my dinner as I had to cry with him for company. What could be the matter with me, an' please your honor?" "Nothing in the world, Trim,"

said my uncle Toby, blowing his nose; "but that thou art a good-natured fellow."

"When I gave him the toast," continued the corporal, "I thought it was proper to tell him I was Captain Shandy's servant, and that your honor (though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father; and that if there was any thing in your house or cellar, ('and thou mightst have added my purse, too,' said my uncle Toby,) he was heartily welcome to it. He made a very low bow (which was meant to your honor), but no answer--for his heart was full--so he went upstairs with the toast. 'I warrant you, my dear,' said I, as I opened the kitchen door, 'your father will be well again.' Mr. Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire, but said not a word, good or bad, to comfort the youth. I thought it was wrong," added the corporal. "I think so, too,"

said my uncle Toby.

"When the lieutenant had taken his gla.s.s of sack and toast, he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen to let me know that in about ten minutes he should be glad if I would come upstairs. 'I believe,' said the landlord, 'he was going to say his prayers, for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bedside; and as I shut the door I saw his son take up a cushion.'

"'I thought,' said the curate, 'that you gentlemen of the army, Mr.

Trim, never said your prayers at all.' 'I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night,' said the landlady, 'very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it.' 'Are you sure of it,'

replied the curate. 'A soldier, an' please your reverence,' said I, 'prays as often (of his own accord) as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king and for his own life, and for his honor too, he has the most reason to pray to G.o.d of any one in the whole world.'" "'Twas well said of thee, Trim," said my uncle Toby. "'But when a soldier,' said I, 'an' please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches up to his knees in cold water, or engaged,' said I, 'for months together in long and dangerous marches; hara.s.sed, perhaps, in his rear to-day; hara.s.sing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded there; resting this night upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the next; benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on, he must say his prayers how and when he can, I believe,' said I, for I was piqued," quoth the corporal, "for the reputation of the army. 'I believe, an't please your reverence,' said I, 'that when a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson, though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy.'" "Thou shouldst not have said that, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "for G.o.d only knows who is a hypocrite and who is not. At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then), it will be seen who has done their duties in this world and who has not; and we shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly." "I hope we shall," said Trim. "It is in the Scripture," said my uncle Toby, "and I will show it thee to-morrow. In the meantime, we may depend upon it, Trim, for our comfort," said my uncle Toby, "that G.o.d Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one." "I hope not," said the corporal. "But go on, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "with thy story."

"When, I went up," continued the corporal, "into the lieutenant's room, which I did not do till the expiration of the ten minutes, he was lying in his bed with his head raised up on his hand, with his elbow upon the pillow, and a clean white cambric handkerchief beside it. The youth was just stooping down to take up the cushion upon which I supposed he had been kneeling; the book was laid upon the bed, and as he rose, in taking up the cushion with one hand, he reached out his other to take it away at the same time. 'Let it remain there, my dear,' said the lieutenant.

"He did not offer to speak to me till I had walked up close to his bedside. 'If you are Captain Shandy's servant,' said he, 'you must present my thanks to your master, with my little boy's thanks along with them, for his courtesy to me, if he was of the Leven's,' said the lieutenant. I told him your honor was. 'Then,' said he, 'I served three campaigns with him in Flanders, and remember him; but 't is most likely, as I had not the honor of any acquaintance with him, that he knows nothing of me. You will tell him, however, that the person his good nature has laid under obligations to him, is one LeFevre, a lieutenant in Angus's; but he knows me not,' said he a second time, musing.

'Possibly, he may my story,' added he; 'pray tell the captain I was the ensign at Breda whose wife was most unfortunately killed with a musket-shot, as she lay in my arms in my tent.' 'I remember the story, an't please your honor,' said I, very well.' 'Do you so?' said he, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief; 'then well may I.' In saying this, he drew a little ring out of his bosom, which seemed tied with a black ribbon about his neck, and kissed it twice. 'Here, Billy,' said he. The boy flew across the room to the bedside, and, falling down upon his knee, took the ring in his hand, and kissed it, too; then kissed his father, and sat down upon the bed and wept."

"I wish," said my uncle Toby, with a deep sigh, "I wish, Trim, I was asleep."

"Your honor," replied the corporal, "is too much concerned. Shall I pour your honor out a gla.s.s of sack to your pipe?" "Do, Trim," said my uncle Toby.

"I remember," said my uncle Toby, sighing again, "the story of the ensign and his wife, with a circ.u.mstance his modesty omitted; and particularly well that he, as well as she, upon some account or other (I forget what), was universally pitied by the whole regiment; but finish the story thou art upon." "Tis finished already," said the corporal, "for I could stay no longer, so wished his honor good-night." Young LeFevre rose from off the bed and saw me to the bottom of the stairs; and, as we went down together, told me they had come from Ireland, and were on their route to join their regiment in Flanders. "But, alas,"

said the corporal, "the lieutenant's last day's march is over." "Then what is to become of his poor boy?" cried my uncle Toby.

It was to my uncle Toby's eternal honor, though I tell it only for the sake of those who, when cooped in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not, for their souls, which way in the world to turn themselves, that, notwithstanding my uncle Toby was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of Dendermond, parallel with the allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously that they scarce allowed him to get his dinner, that, nevertheless, he gave up Dendermond, although he had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp, and bent his whole thoughts-toward the private distresses at the inn, and that, except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege of Dendermond into a blockade, he left Dendermond to itself, to be relieved or not by the French king as the French king thought good, and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his son.

That kind Being, who is a friend to the friendless, shall recompense thee for this.

"Thou hast left this matter short," said my uncle Toby to the corporal, as he was putting him to bed, "and I will tell thee in what, Trim. In the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to LeFevre, as sickness and traveling are both expensive, and thou knewest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay, that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse, because, had he stood in need, thou knowest, Trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself."

"Your honor knows," said the corporal, "I had no orders." "True," quoth my uncle Toby, "thou did'st very right, Trim, as a soldier, but certainly very wrong as a man."

"In the second place, for which, indeed, thou hast the same excuse,"

continued my uncle Toby, "when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house, thou shouldst have offered him my house, too. A sick brother officer should have the best quarters, Trim, and if we had him with us, we could tend and look to him. Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim, and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's and mine together, we might recruit him again at once and set him upon his legs."

"In a fortnight, or three weeks," added my uncle Toby, smiling, "he might march." "He will never march, an', please your honor, in this world," said the corporal. "He will march," said my uncle Toby, rising from the side of the bed with one shoe off. "An', please your honor,"

said the corporal, "he will never march, but to his grave." "He shall march," cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch, "he shall march to his regiment." "He can not stand it," said the corporal. "He shall be supported," said my uncle Toby. "He'll drop at last," said the corporal, "and what will become of his boy?" "He shall not drop," said my uncle Toby, firmly.

"Ah, welladay, do what we can for him," said Trim, maintaining his point, "the poor soul will die." "He shall not die, by G--d," cried my uncle Toby.

The _accusing spirit_ which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in, and the _recording angel_, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.

My uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches pocket, and, having ordered the corporal to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep.

The sun looked bright the morning after to every eye in the village but LeFevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eyelids, and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its circle when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and, without preface or apology, set himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did; how he had rested in the night; what was his complaint; where was his pain, and what could he do to help him? and without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the corporal, the night before, for him.

"You shall go home directly, LeFevre," said my uncle Toby, "to my house, and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter, and we'll have an apothecary, and the corporal shall be your nurse and I'll be your servant, LeFevre."

There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul and showed you the goodness of his nature; to this, there was something in his looks, and voice, and manner superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that before my uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat and was pulling it toward him. The blood and spirits of LeFevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart, rallied back, the film forsook his eyes for a moment, and he looked up wishfully in my uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy, and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the pulse fluttered--stopped--went on--throbbed--stopped again--moved--stopped--shall I go on? No.

XXIII.

STEPHEN GIRARD

(BORN 1750--DIED 1831.)

THE NAPOLEON OF MERCHANTS--HIS LIFE SUCCESSFUL, AND YET A FAILURE.

Imagine the figure of an old man, low in stature, squarely built, clumsily dressed, and standing on large feet. To this uncouth form, add a repulsive face, wrinkled, cold, colorless, and stony, with one eye dull and the other blind--a "wall-eye." His expression is that of a man wrapped in the mystery of his own hidden thoughts. He looks--

"Like monumental bronze, unchanged his look-- A soul which pity never touched or shook-- Trained, from his lowly cradle to his bier, The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook Unchanging, fearing but the charge of fear-- A stoic of the mart, a man without a tear."

Such a man was Stephen Girard, one of the most distinguished merchants in the annals of commerce, and the founder of the celebrated Girard College in Philadelphia. Let us briefly trace his history and observe his character.

Girard was a Frenchman by birth, born in the environs of Bordeaux, in May, 1750, of obscure parents. His early instruction was very limited; and, being deformed by a wall-eye, he was an object of ridicule to the companions of his boyhood. This treatment, as is supposed by his biographer, soured his temper, made him shrink from society, and led him to live among his own thoughts rather than in mental communion with his fellows.

The precise cause of his leaving his native hearth-stone is unknown. The fact is certain that he did leave it, when only ten or twelve years old, and sailed, a poor cabin-boy, to the West Indies. This was his starting-point in life. Never had any boy a smaller capital on which to build his fortune. He went out from his unhappy home, ignorant, poor, unfriended, and unknown. That from such a cheerless beginning he should rise to the rank of a merchant prince must be accounted one of the marvels of human history.

His first step was to gain the confidence of his superiors, not so much by affability and courtesy--for of these social virtues he was never possessed--as by steady good conduct, fidelity to his employers, temperance, and studied effort to do his humble duties well. Whatsoever his hands found to do he did with his might. As a consequence, we find him, in a few years, in high favor with a Captain Randall, of New York, who always spoke of him as "my Stephen," and who promoted him from one position to another, until he secured him the command of a small vessel, and sent him on trading voyages between the ports of New York and New Orleans. That the poor cabin-boy should rise, by his own merits, in some six or seven years, to be the commander of a vessel was success such as few lads have ever won with such slender means and few helps as were within reach 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 ill.u.s.tration of the folly of premature, ill-a.s.sorted 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, circ.u.mstances 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, giving him the right to renew his lease for a second ten years, if he chose to demand it, when the first one should expire. This was an act of judicious foresight. When, at the expiration of the first lease, he visited his landlord, that gentleman, on seeing him enter his counting-room, said:

"Well, Mr. Girard, you have made out so well by your bargain that I suppose you will hardly hold me to the renewal of the lease for ten years more."

"I have come," replied Gerard, with a look of grim satisfaction, "to secure the ten years more. I shall not let you off."

Nor did he. And the great profits he derived from that fortunate lease greatly broadened the foundation of his subsequently colossal fortune.