He made no secret of
the fact, that he considered the idleness of Sunday an injury to the
people, moral and economical. He would have opened his bank on
Sundays, if any one would have come to it. For his part, he required
no rest, and would have none. He never travelled. He never attended
public assemblies or amusements. He had no affections to gratify, no
friends to visit, no curiosity to appease, no tastes to indulge. What
he once said of himself appeared to be true, that he rose in the
morning with but a single object, and that was to labor so hard all
day as to be able to sleep all night. The world was absolutely nothing
to him but a working-place. He scorned and scouted the opinion, that
old men should cease to labor, and should spend the evening of their
days in tranquillity. "No," he would say, "labor is the price of life,
its happiness, its everything; to rest is to rust; every man should
labor to the last hour of his ability." Such was Stephen Girard, the
richest man who ever lived in Pennsylvania.
This is an unpleasing picture of a citizen of polite and amiable
Philadelphia.
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