he stranger, in answer to her signal, and found that the
French captain had lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total
ignorance of his whereabouts. His vessel, he said, was bound from New
Orleans to a Canadian port, and he was anxious to proceed on his voyage.
The American skipper informed him of his locality, and also apprised him
of the fact that war had broken out between the colonies and Great
Britain, and that the American coast was so well lined with British
cruisers that he would never reach port but as a prize. "What shall I
do?" cried the Frenchman, in great alarm. "Enter the bay, and make a
push for Philadelphia," was the reply. "It is your only chance."

The Frenchman protested that he did not know the way, and had no pilot.
The American captain, pitying his distress, found him a pilot, and even
loaned him five dollars, which the pilot demanded in advance. The sloop
got under weigh again, and passed into the Delaware, beyond the defenses
which had been erected for its protection, just in time to avoid capture
by a British war vessel which now made its appearance at the mouth of
the bay. Philadelphia was reached in due time, and, as the war bade fair
to put an end to his voyages, the captain sold the sloop and her cargo,
of which he was part owner, and, entering a small store in Water Street,
began the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. His capital was small,
his business trifling in extent, and he himself labored under the
disadvantage of being almost unable to speak the English language. In
person he was short and stout, with a dull, repulsive countenance, which
his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye (being blind in the other) made
almost hideous. He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by
his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him.

This man was Stephen Girard, who was afterward destined to play so
important a part in the history of the city to which the mere chances of
war sent him a stranger.

He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May, 1750, and was
the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of
that city. His life at home was a hard one. At the age of eight years,
he discovered that he was blind in one eye, and the mortification and
grief which this discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire
life. He afterward declared that his father treated him with
considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were sent to
college