The child soon died; the
mother never recovered her reason. For twenty-five years she lived in
the hospital, and, dying in 1815, was buried in the hospital grounds
after the manner of the Quakers. The coffin was brought to the grave,
followed by the husband and the managers of the institution, who
remained standing about it in silence for several minutes. It was then
lowered to its final resting-place, and again the company remained
motionless and silent for a while. Girard looked at the coffin once
more, then turned to an acquaintance and said, as he walked away, "It
is very well." A green mound, without headstone or monument, still
marks the spot where the remains of this unhappy woman repose. Girard,
both during his lifetime and after his death, was a liberal, though
not lavish, benefactor of the institution which had so long sheltered
his wife.

Fortunes were not made rapidly in the olden time. After the
Revolution, Girard engaged in commerce with the West Indies, in
partnership with his brother John; and he is described in an official
paper of the time as one who "carried on an extensive business as a
merchant, and is a considerable owner of real estate." But on the
dissolution of the partnership in 1790, when he had been in business,
as mariner and merchant, for sixteen years, his estate was valued at
only thirty thousand dollars. The times were troubled. The French
Revolution, the massacre at St. Domingo, our disturbed relations with
England, and afterwards with France, the violence of our party
contests, all tended to make merchants timid, and to limit their
operations. Girard, as his papers indicate, and as he used to relate
in conversation, took more than a merchant's interest in the events of
the time. From the first, he had formally cast in his lot with the
struggling Colonists, as we learn from a yellow and faded document
left among his papers:--

"I do hereby certify that Stephen Girard, of the city of
Philadelphia, merchant, hath voluntarily taken the oath of
allegiance and fidelity, as directed by an act of the
General Assembly of Pennsylvania, passed the 13th day of
June, A.D. 1777. Witness my hand and seal, the 27th day of
October, A.D. 1778.

"JNO. ORD.
No. 1678."

The oath was repeated the year following. When the French Revolution
had divided the country into two parties, the Federalists and the