to
wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments had exhausted the
supply of sheets. 'I would put them,' he would say, 'in any old rag I
could find.'"

[Illustration: GIRARD'S HEROISM.]

"If he ever left the hospital, it was to visit the infected districts,
and assist in removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying
without help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant who was
hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, affords
us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime vocation. A
carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence of the
deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame house, and
the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his mouth, opened the
door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. A short,
thick-set man stepped from the coach and entered the house. In a minute
or two the observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the
proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the
stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt,
yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist the
sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own; his long, damp,
tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet dragging helpless upon the
pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage door, the driver averting his
face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist. Partly dragging,
partly lifting, Girard succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in
getting him into the vehicle. He then entered it himself, closed the
door, and the carriage drove away toward the hospital."[A]

For sixty days Mr. Girard continued to discharge his duties, never
absenting himself from his post, being nobly sustained by Peter Helm.

Again, in 1797 and 1798, when the city was scourged a second and a third
time with the fever, he volunteered his services, and more than earned
the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. In the absence of physicians, he
took upon himself the office of prescribing for the sick, and as his
treatment involved careful nursing and the use of simple remedies only,
he was very successful. In 1799 he wrote to his friend Devize, then in
France, but who had been the physician at the Bush Hill Hospital in
1793:

"During all this frightful time I have constantly remained in the city,
and, without neglecting any public duties, I have played a part which
will make you smile. Woul