Such were the
voyages so often successfully made by the Voltaire, the Rousseau, the
Helvetius, and the Montesquieu; ships long the pride of Girard and the
boast of Philadelphia, their names being the tribute paid by the
merchant to the literature of his native land. He seldom failed to
make very large profits. He rarely, if ever, lost a ship.
His neighbors, the merchants of Philadelphia, deemed him a lucky man.
Many of them thought they could do as well as he, if they only had his
luck. But the great volumes of his letters and papers, preserved in a
room of the Girard College, show that his success in business was not
due, in any degree whatever, to good fortune. Let a money-making
generation take note, that Girard principles inevitably produce Girard
results. The grand, the fundamental secret of his success, as of all
success, was that _he understood his business_. He had a personal,
familiar knowledge of the ports with which he traded, the commodities
in which he dealt, the vehicles in which they were carried, the
dangers to which they were liable, and the various kinds of men
through whom he acted.
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