Part 4

Why there should be this invidious distinction we do not know, since, so far as we can judge, it is quite as noble to feed mankind as to provide shelter. But the evolution will be worth watching and assisting.

A SHINING MODEL FOR PHILANTHROPISTS.

Farsightedness of Stephen Girard Made His Bequests the Most Valuable in the Country.

The death of Russell Sage and the problem of the distribution of his millions were the subject of much comment, some of which led naturally to editorial reminiscence. The Saint Louis _Globe-Democrat_ reverts to the case of Stephen Girard, who, proportionately to the amount of his possessions, was probably his country’s greatest benefactor in the way of public bequests.

When Stephen Girard died in Philadelphia, in 1831, he was easily the richest man in the United States, the estate he disposed of amounting to seven million dollars. By will, he gave one hundred and forty thousand dollars to relatives (he was a childless widower), a number of bequests to employees, ninety-six thousand dollars to organized charities, three hundred thousand dollars to the State of Pennsylvania for internal improvements, and certain property in Louisiana to the city of New Orleans for public improvements.

The residue, amounting to over six million dollars, was bestowed on the city of Philadelphia, chiefly for the erection and maintenance of a college to accommodate not fewer than three hundred white male orphans, and the courts have construed a fatherless boy to be an orphan.

Put City in Charge of Work.

Mr. Girard put the city in charge of this work, and since 1869 it has been managed by a board of trustees appointed by the courts. Under its care the value of the Girard estate has increased to thirty-two million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, three-fourths of which is productive real estate, with the remainder in choice cash assets.

Girard College, with its seventeen buildings, occupies forty acres. Its pupils at present number one thousand four hundred and eighty-three, and up to the present time it has fed, clothed, and educated seven thousand seven hundred boys, fitting them to step at once into active pursuits. This work will go on through the centuries with increasing resources.

Girard had a striking version of what wealth is for. He was a natural money-maker from his first commercial venture. He enjoyed the shaping of business and making it pay. He was no easy mark, but, giving others their due, exacted his own. His public spirit was highly developed, an inborn trait.

As a banker in the period of the second war with England, Girard personally saved the credit of the national credit more than once. He served Philadelphia many years in various official capacities, including that of councilman. Large internal improvements appealed to him strongly, and he was among the foremost in advocating and subscribing to them.

Set No Value on Wealth.

Girard set no value upon wealth, except as a means to accomplish worthy ends, and these were more to him than his money, or even his life.

In the year 1793, when Philadelphia lost a sixth of its population by yellow fever, and most of its citizens had fled, Girard personally took the inside management of a pest-house, ignoring all other business for two months. In one hundred days of that autumn the burials in the city exceeded four thousand.

At forty years of age Girard had only a competence, and wrote to a friend: “I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my highest ambition. I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family and that you are in possession of an honest fortune. This is all a wise man has a right to wish for.”

Yet in the next forty years, largely through the fluctuations of values caused by war, he honestly and usefully accumulated seven million dollars, and devoted it to an everlasting mission of beneficence to his fellow men. He wrote that “Labor is the price of life, its happiness, its everything. To rest is to rust.”

Long-Headed In His Views.

He was long-headed in his views. More than a century ago his advice for a large city was: “Build high, as there is only one ground rent.” He would have none but solid construction.

A farm near the city was his place of recreation. On his journeys there his lunch was under the seat, and on his return the space was occupied with milk and butter for his domestic use. But he spent a great deal of money on the introduction of rare plants and fine cattle. He steadily declared that no man should be an idler on his money, and he kept his word.

It is well said of him that “The spirit of work made him active; the spirit of justice made him exact; the spirit of trade made him rich; the spirit of duty made him brave; the spirit of patriotism made him generous; and the spirit of love made him great.”

As a credit mark on the side of a vast fortune Girard is conspicuous, and he fully succeeded in not dying rich, for he gave all to his fellow citizens, making sure that it would be safeguarded for that purpose forever.

Girard was a strange character. Penurious about small things, disagreeable in his personality, he was generous, beneficent, and public-spirited in a large way.

WHEN THE RICH MAN MARRIES A POOR GIRL

A Writer Asserts That Wealth’s Marriage Into the “Working Classes” Will Benefit the Race.

It is not altogether increasing newspaper sensationalism that indicates a larger number of marriages between rich men and poor girls. There are, it seems safe to say, more and more such marriages.

The judge does not always ride sadly away and leave Maud Müller raking hay. Frequently he departs only to get a marriage license and return post-haste. And Maud drops her rake right gladly and directs the way to the nearest justice of the peace.

Says the New York _Medical Journal_:

Marriages are constantly occurring in the United States between young men of great wealth and young women engaged in earning their own living; but, despite the familiarity of the phenomenon, no such marriage ever fails to cause apparently astonished comment, and, above all, copious newspaper gossip.

In Europe, where those who have inherited wealth are taught and really believe that they are of superior clay to the class of inherited poverty, and the latter assent to the teaching, such alliances may well cause a slight shock, diluted perhaps with some pleasure at the condescension of the man.

In our country, however, where one family can hardly have the pas of another by a single century, astonishment is ridiculous and out of place. Few of our richest men are idle, and their work differs only in magnitude from that of the poor.

If we grant that a century of idleness can enervate a family, a marriage into the “working classes” can only be beneficial. Stock must be enriched from time to time from near the soil.

Advocates of highly restricted interbreeding are fond of pointing to the race-horse as a superior product of their principles. A race-horse, however, is a poor creature from the point of view of usefulness; he is a beautiful specialized bundle of nerves, and requires more coddling than a healthy human baby.

Interbreeding does not work out well in the human species; the haughty Austrian aristocracy, which considers the nobility of France and England as upstarts, and ostracizes any member who marries into a family much younger than the Cæsars, is not as a class strong and healthy.

It is from Austria in great measure that our circuses secure their giants and midgets, and many other of the various “freaks,” objects of interest certainly, but hardly of pride.

Intellectually, we do not think that the statesmen of Austria, Spain, and Russia are the equals of those of France and the United States, while the English commoners have given a remarkable account of themselves.

We should be disposed to applaud the good sense of any rich young American who married a beautiful girl of poor but decent antecedents, in spite of the fact that such marriages depend upon unreasoning sexual attraction, like the great majority of marriages. As it is, we can only note the care Nature takes of a race, however heedless she may be of the individual.

DOES A STEPMOTHER MAKE A GOOD MOTHER?

Considerable Discussion Is Provoked by Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s Assertion That She Does Not.

Vice-chancellor Pitney, of New Jersey, passing on an application to have two children taken from their divorced mother and placed in charge of their stepmother, is reported to have said:

I never knew of a stepmother who was a good mother. There may be such instances on record, but I know of none, and I have had some experience.

Naturally, the Vice-Chancellor has been strongly controverted. Thus the New York _World_ says:

The stepmother of fiction has a sharp face and a sharp tongue, and rarely misses an opportunity to wound sensitive young souls.

But the stepmother of fact is usually quite a different person. Certain individuals of scientific habits who have dabbled in the domestic relations believe that it would be better for most children if they could be brought up by stepmothers instead of mothers.

The stepmother generally has all the maternal instinct that any healthy child needs, while she is not likely to be a victim of the delusion that her stepchildren are so much better than other people’s children that it is an impenetrable mystery why they do not die young.

But, of course, there are stepmothers and stepmothers, and doubtless the woman who makes a poor stepmother would make a poor mother if she had children of her own.

As a popular prejudice the aversions to stepmothers has little more basis in fact than the aversion to mothers-in-law. Most men, in spite of the professional humorists, are on excellent terms with their mothers-in-law, and most women who have married daughters are excessively fond of their sons-in-law. At its best the mother-in-law joke was never a very good joke. Its humor consists largely in its not being true.

Vice-Chancellor Pitney may know a good deal about the kind of stepmothers who get into court, but the opinion of Abraham Lincoln about stepmothers is more valuable, because he was brought up by one.

The Macon (Georgia) _Telegraph_ indicates why stepmothers may do better for children than a mother can.

The one defect in the God-like mother love is the inability to view her offspring with an impartial eye, and see them as others see them. And it would be far from a bold estimate to venture that the majority of men who get into trouble in later life turn their thoughts back at such times to an irresponsible childhood when a devoted and indulgent mother’s love stood between them and the penalties of all childish misdeeds.

The stepmother, on the other hand, endowed, as a rule, with the maternal affection that springs eternal in the woman’s breast, but unblinded by the other’s bias for the children of her flesh, more frequently approaches her often thankless task, governed by a sense of duty, rather than by affection merely, and many have there been as a result, both men and women, Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s dictum to the contrary notwithstanding, to rise up and call the stepmother blessed.

AMERICAN STOMACHS AS STRONG AS OF OLD.

Refutation of Statement That Our Ancestors Were Wont to Dine on Pork and Doughnuts.

One English historian began to write a history of the United States, from the adoption of the Constitution to the fall of the Republic. The battle of Gettysburg stopped him.

Professor John Mason Tyler, of Amherst, lecturing at the University of Chicago, said that climate had been the principal cause of America’s phenomenal development, and that climate ultimately would cause its degeneracy.

The Baltimore _American_ argues against Professor Tyler, as follows:

Says the frenzied prophet: “Americans one hundred years ago lived on pork and doughnuts to a great extent. Before going to bed they were not satisfied unless they ate a large piece of mince-pie. We say to-day, ‘What a barbarous bill of fare!’ We, who can’t stand anything stronger than tea and crackers.”

In this lively sketch that, in a breath, spans a century and grasps unerringly the social and culinary philosophy of a people, the learned professor has done credit to the environment of his lecture. The doughnut philosophy here propounded is worthy to rank with the potato philosophy of an economic school that has long gone into extinction, while the dire predictions it made are embalmed in the history of intellectual errors.

The notion of a doughnut and salt pork diet, with a hunk of mince-pie as a nightcap, is a gentle evolution in social fiction. The American palate of a hundred years ago was as susceptible to the temptation of fried chicken and apple cider as it is to-day.

If the Amherst teacher could sit down to the cuisine upon which the Americans of a hundred years ago dined, he would be apt to revise his estimate of it as a “barbarous diet.” If he does not believe this, let him peruse a colonial cook-book, but with the warning that thereafter the diet of the present day will appear flaccid and unprofitable.

As to the charge that we of this age coddle our palates with tea and crackers, let the anemic professor speak for himself. The healthy American digestion tackles fearlessly canvasback duck, diamondback terrapin, and Welsh rarebit, highly condimented and in complemental relation with beverages more exhilarating, though, perhaps, less deadly, than tea, and his slumber makes no record of a wrecking of the American constitution by nightmares or disturbing physical emotions.

The breakdown of the American nation is conditional upon the collapse of the American constitution, then long after Macaulay’s solitary New Zealander seats himself on a broken span of London Bridge to view the débris of the English nation, the Stars and Stripes will still be waving over the American “constitution.”

In the meanwhile, some consolation may be derived from the fact that the American type of soldier is the finest the world affords. Darwin drew attention to the fact that the European in the American army tended to conform to the American type in stature and vigor under the influence of the American climate.

LOVE IN A COTTAGE.

Just a century ago, in 1806, was born Nathaniel Parker Willis, in Portland, Maine. Willis was a fellow townsman of Longfellow, but while the latter finally made his way to Boston and Cambridge, Willis found New York the most congenial residence. There he was successively editor of the _Mirror_, the _Corsair_, and the _Home Journal_, enlivening their pages with an inexhaustible supply of witty, well-timed, and sometimes brilliant prose and verse. He was the first American to write _vers de société_ that deserved preservation, and that were at once light, amusing, and in good taste.

Willis affected an extreme elegance in dress, manner, and surroundings. He pretended to write amid rare flowers, with old vines beside him, and to use an amber penholder in the summer to cool his palm. Those who disliked this display of foppery were wont to explain the initials of his name as representing “Namby-Pamby.” But with all his superficial frivolity, Willis was a man of genuine talent. His early poems were quite as popular as Longfellow’s. He was the first American author to make a good living wholly by his pen. He discovered and gave substantial aid to many younger men of genius, among them James Russell Lowell and Bayard Taylor, and he first drew the attention of his countrymen to the great gifts of Thackeray, long before “Vanity Fair” had been written, and while the future novelist was still known only as a writer for the English magazines. He even engaged Thackeray to contribute a series of papers from Paris to the New York _Corsair_—this as far back as 1838. Willis also, in his own letters from Europe, created a model for all foreign correspondents since that time; and his collected epistles, “Pencilings by the Way,” still remain the most vivid sketches in existence of the men and women who were famous when Victoria first became queen.

The little poem here reprinted is one of the light, half-mocking productions, which its author wrote to amuse his urban public. It voices the sentiment of the young-man-about-town in the New York of the early fifties. Perhaps the best comment upon it is the fact that Willis himself, whenever he could possibly do so, was accustomed to leave the city and enjoy the rustic pleasures of his own country-house at Idlewild on the Hudson.

BY NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

They may talk of love in a cottage, And bowers of trellised vine, Of nature bewitchingly simple, And milkmaids half divine; They may talk of the pleasure of sleeping In the shade of a spreading tree, And a walk in the fields at morning, By the side of a footstep free!

But give me a sly flirtation By the light of a chandelier— With music to play in the pauses, And nobody very near; Or a seat on a silken sofa, With a glass of pure old wine, And mama too blind to discover The small white hand in mine.

Your love in a cottage is hungry; Your vine is a nest for flies; Your milkmaid shocks the Graces, And simplicity talks of pies! You lie down to your shady slumber And wake with a bug in your ear, And your damsel that walks in the morning Is shod like a mountaineer.

True love is at home on a carpet, And mightily likes his ease; And true love has an eye for a dinner, And starves beneath shady trees. His wing is the fan of a lady; His foot’s an invisible thing; And his arrow is tipped with a jewel, And shot from a silver string.

Exhumations of Noted Persons.

BY E. B. MITCHELL.

Curiosity and a Frenzied Spirit of Vengeance the Principal Causes for the Desecration of the Tombs of the Great—Dead Pope Placed on Trial—A Skeleton Crowned as Queen.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Good Frend for Jesus sake forbeare, To digg the Dust enclosed Heare: Blest be ye Man yt spares thes stones And Curst be he yt moves my bones. _Epitaph on Shakespeare’s Tomb._

Possibly, on account of this epitaph which Shakespeare had inscribed above his grave in the church of Stratford-on-Avon and which it would need a bold man to disregard now, the ashes of the great dramatist have been more fortunate than those of many distinguished men. Despite our inherent horror of disturbing the dead and our respect for the grave as consecrated ground, changed conditions, and, in some cases, mere curiosity, have made the list of celebrities whose bones have been moved a long one.

History shows that in securing immunity for one’s grave, neither the lapse of centuries nor past greatness is of any avail. It is on record that in the chaos of the end of the ninth century a pope had the body of his predecessor dug from the tomb, dressed it in its pontifical vestments, and had it tried and condemned by a synod. The hideous mockery terminated only when the mutilated body was thrown into the Tiber.

Dead Pope on Trial.

This scene, which marks the lowest point to which civil war and anarchy in Rome reduced the papacy, took place in February or March of 897. About eleven months before, Pope Formosus had died after a stormy pontificate of five years. He was followed to the grave in fifteen days by his successor. Then Stephen VI seated himself in the chair of St. Peter. Stephen belonged to the faction opposed to Formosus’s ally, Arnulf of Germany. Party feeling and party hatred ran high. The men temporarily in power had injuries to avenge, and Stephen, in a fit of almost insane fury, determined to try his predecessor.

On what charge the dead Formosus was actually tried is not now very clear—probably this detail was never considered of much importance. Stephen summoned a synod, dragged the corpse out of the grave, dressed it in its full pontifical robes and himself presided over the court. He made no pretence of being an impartial judge, however. Paying no attention to the trembling deacon to whom had been assigned the hopeless task of defending the dead Pope, Stephen turned savagely on the corpse.

“Why hast thou in thy ambition usurped the Apostolic Seat, who wast previously only Bishop of Portus?” he demanded.

The synod played out its part in the wretched farce. Formosus was convicted and solemnly deposed. The vestments were torn from the body of the dead pontiff, the three fingers of the right hand used in bestowing the benediction were cut off and the mummy, hauled through the streets by the mob, was thrown into the Tiber. A few months later Stephen was strangled in his palace.

Equally brutal was the treatment given to Cromwell’s body when the Restoration brought Charles II back to England and the cavaliers to power. Cromwell had directed that his interment be in Westminster Abbey, and every effort was made to have his funeral as impressive as that of any crowned king. The attempt, however, was not altogether successful. In his famous diary John Evelyn notes:

Cromwell’s Body Hanged.

“It was the joyfullest funeral that ever I saw, for there were none that cried but dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with as barbarous noise, drinking, and taking tobacco in the streets.”

On the eve of January 30, 1661, the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and the regicide Bradshaw were dug from their graves. The next day they were dragged to Tyburn and hanged with their faces to Westminster Hall, where they had sentenced Charles to death. The corpses were buried at the foot of the gallows, where Connaught Square is now, and the heads, impaled on pikes, remained for years above the entrance of Westminster Hall.

After many years a high wind carried the head of the Lord Protector down. A soldier made off with it, and in 1779 it was on exhibition in Old Bond Street. A private family is now in possession of the ghastly relic—the features so well preserved that the large wart over one eye which was so noticeable in life is still plainly visible.

Wyclif’s Bones Burned.

The bones of Wyclif were treated in much the same way by the Council of Constance, in 1414, though there was, in his case, more of ceremony and less of mere hatred. The remains of the English reformer were burned and the ashes thrown into a brook, which, of course, ultimately emptied into the ocean.

“Thus,” says one writer, “the ashes of Wyclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”

But it is not always the enemies of the dead who disturb their bones. There is no more remarkable tradition than the crowning of the dead Queen Inez de Castro when her lord, young Pedro, ascended the throne of Portugal in the fourteenth century. The death of Inez, murdered by the command of her father-in-law, Alfonso XII, had been avenged by Don Pedro, but the torture of the assassins did not satisfy the prince.

Queen’s Skeleton Crowned.