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.
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