Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1885 — An Old Fur-Deaier’s Work. [ARTICLE]

An Old Fur-Deaier’s Work.

Nearly a century ago a queer, stooped, weazened little man, shabbily dressed and carrying a green baize bag, full of papers, in his hand, was one'of the most familiar figures in the streets of Philadelphia. The wealthy merchants began to point him out as a poor young Frenchman, who had scraped a good deal of money together dealing in furs. He married a pretty young woman, bf whom he was very fond, and if; he had had a happy home, full of healthy boys and girls, we probably never would have heard of him, But his young wife soon became yicilontly insane. He placed her in aifakylunv and after that his home waslimited to one hare room, scantily furnished with an iron cot, desk, and chair. Whqa th® yellow fever broke out m the city, he 'S'ent to the hospital where his wife lay ill with it, staye4 with tier until she died, and then, leaving all fiis wide commercial interests, remained in the hospital to nurse the victims of the plague. • This man’s name was Stephen Girard. He was harej, grasping, and cynical, hut his heart held a tender warmth for the children who had never come to him, and he left his great fortune to found a home for orphan boys. He carried out his peculiar ideas in his plans for it. Nothing in the buildings or in the teaching was to be a makeshift or sham. The very roof of the house must be of solid marble. The hoys were to be taught to believe in God, and to lead upright lives. He did not aim to fit them to be educated gentlemen, but educated workingmen. Girard College is a noble building of Greek architecture, which stands, with a village of its surrounding dormitories and halls, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, About five hundred orphan boys are fed, clothed, and trained in it. Within the last year an industrial school lias been opened in it, in which the pupils are taught mechanical arts. In some of the beat private schools of this country, also, an hour each day is .given to the use of tools, the construction of machinery, weaving, printing, and other crafts wliich “teach the boys the use of their hands.” The rules of the trades Unions have limited the number of apprentices received into the trades, and hence these wide, honorable roads to competence and fortune are in this country filled with skilled Avorkmen from Europe. The industrial schpols at Girard College and elsewhere are intended to fit American lads for the same work. There is no prouder feature of American fife than tlie institutions like Girard College, the great polytechnic school at Betlilehem, the Peabody Institute, Cornell, and Johns Hopkins Universities, and other costly schools, founded and endowed by men who have amassed fortunes by their own labors, for the education and service of boys as poor, as they once were, — Youth’s Companion, ,