Part 17 (1/2)

A sloop was seen one morning off the mouth of Delaware Bay, floating the flag of France and a signal of distress. Girard, then quite a young man, was captain of this sloop, and was on his way to a Canadian port with freight from New Orleans. An American skipper, seeing his distress, went to his aid, but told him the American war had broken out, and that the British cruisers were all along the American coast, and would seize his vessel. He told him his only chance was to make a push for Philadelphia.

Girard did not know the way, and was short of money. The skipper loaned him five dollars to get the service of a pilot who demanded his money in advance; and his sloop pa.s.sed into the Delaware just in time to avoid capture by a British war vessel. He sold the sloop and cargo in Philadelphia, and began business on the capital. Being a foreigner, unable to speak English, with a repulsive face, and blind in one eye, it was hard for him to get a start. But he was not the man to give up.

There seemed to be nothing he would not do for money. He bought and sold anything, from groceries to old junk. Everything he touched prospered.

In 1780, he resumed the New Orleans and San Domingo trade, in which he had been engaged at the breaking out of the War of the Revolution, and in one year cleared nearly fifty thousand dollars.

Everybody, especially his jealous brother merchants, attributed his great success to his luck. While, undoubtedly, he was fortunate in happening to be at the right place at the right time, yet he was precision, method, accuracy, energy itself. He left nothing to chance.

His plans and schemes were worked out with mathematical care. His letters, written to his captains in foreign ports, laying out their routes and giving detailed instruction from which they were never allowed to deviate under any circ.u.mstances, are models of foresight and systematic planning.

Girard never lost a s.h.i.+p; and many times, what brought financial ruin to many others, as the War of 1812, only increased his wealth. What seemed luck with him was only good judgment and promptness in seizing opportunities, and the greatest care and zeal in personal attention to all the details of his business and the management of his own affairs.

[Footnote: See Simpson's ”Life of Stephen Girard” (Phila. 1832), and H.

W. Arey's ”Girard College and its Founder” (1860).]

XXIV.

HUMILITY.

MEMORY GEMS.

Humility is the true cure for many a needless heartache.--A. Montague

It is easy to look down on others; to look down on ourselves is the difficulty.--Lord Peterborough

Humility is a divine veil which covers our good deeds, and hides them from our eyes.--St. John Climacas

Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue.--Chrysostom

Modest humility is beauty's crown; for the beautiful is a hidden thing, and shrinks from its own power.--Schiller

We pa.s.s now from the strong and active virtue of self-help, to the gentle and pa.s.sive virtue of humility. In doing so, we quickly discover that it requires a sound moral judgment to strike the right balance between humility and self-reliance, and between meekness and self-respect. The true man is both meek and self-reliant, humble and yet by no means incapable of self-a.s.sertion. The really strong man is the most thoroughly gentle of men, and the genuinely self-confident man is the one who is most truly humble in his regard for the rights and interests of others.

We have great need of this particular grace, and we ought to study its relation to our life in general; for we should often have reason to be ashamed of our most brilliant actions if the world could see the motives from which they spring.

Humility has been well defined as ”a simple and lowly estimation of one's self.” When practically thought of, it is mostly looked upon in a negative light, and considered as the absence of, or opposite to, pride.

The general line of human thinking rather tends in the opposite direction; but experience teaches that if we wish to be great, we shall do well to begin by being little. If we desire to construct a strong and n.o.ble character, we must not forget that the greatest lives have always rested on foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.

Humility does not consist in a disposition falsely to underrate ourselves, ”but in being willing to waive our rights, and descend to a lower place than is our due; in being ready to admit our liability to error, and in freely owning our faults when conscious of having been wrong; and, in short, in not being over-careful of our own dignity.”

This virtue is the friend of intellect instead of its enemy, because humility is both a moral instinct which seeks truth, and a moral instrument for attaining truth. It leads us to base our knowledge on truth; it also leads us truthfully to recognize the real measure of our capacity.

All really great men have been humble men in spirit and temper. Such was Lincoln; such was Was.h.i.+ngton. Izaac Walton relates how George Herbert helped a poor man whose horse had fallen under his load, laying off his coat for that purpose, aiding him to unload, and then again to load his cart. When his friends rebuked Herbert for this service he said that ”the thought of what he had done would prove music to him at midnight, for he felt bound, so far as was in his power, to practice that for which he prayed.”

An instance often cited, but always beautiful, is that of Sir Philip Sidney when mortally wounded at Zutphen as described by an old writer: ”Being thirsty with an excess of bleeding, he called for drink, which was presently brought him; but as he was putting the bottle to his mouth, he saw a poor soldier carried along, casting up his eyes at the bottle; which Sir Philip perceiving, took it from his lips before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man with these words: 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.'” It mattered nothing to Sir Philip that he was an officer and therefore of higher standing than the poor private.