He was then sixty-five, but he
expected and meant to live to a good age. "The Russians," he would
say, when he was mixing his _olla podrida_ of a Russian salad,
"understand best how to eat and drink; and I am going to see how long,
by following their customs, I can live." He kept an excellent table;
but he became abstemious as he grew older, and lived chiefly on his
salad and his good claret. En-joying perfect health, it was not until
about the year 1828, when he was seventy-eight years of age, that he
entered upon the serious consideration of a plan for the final
disposal of his immense estate. Upon one point his mind had been long
made up. "No man," said he, "shall be a gentleman on _my_ money." He
often, said that, even if he had had a son, he should have been
brought up to labor, and should not, by a great legacy, be exempted
from the necessity of labor. "If I should leave him twenty thousand
dollars," he said, "he would be lazy or turn gambler." Very likely.
The son of a man like Girard, who was virtuous without being able to
make virtue engaging, whose mind was strong but rigid and
ill-furnished, commanding but uninstructive, is likely to have a
barren mind and rampant desires, the twin causes of debauchery.
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