deserted. It was a season of horror and dread. Those who could not get
away avoided each other, and the sufferers were left to languish and
die. Money could not buy nurses in sufficient numbers, and often the
victims lay unburied for days in the places where they had died. So
terrible was the panic that it seemed that nothing could stay it.

On the 10th of September the _Federal Gazette_, the only paper which had
not suspended its publication, contained an anonymous card, stating that
of the visitors of the poor all but three had succumbed to the disease
or fled from the city, and begging assistance from such benevolent
citizens as would consent to render their aid. On the 12th and 14th,
meetings were held at the City Hall, at the last of which a volunteer
committee was appointed to superintend the measures to be taken for
checking the pestilence. Twenty-seven men volunteered to serve, but only
twelve had the courage to fulfill their promise. They set to work
promptly. The hospital at Bush Hill was reported by the physician to be
in a deplorable state--without order, dirty and foul, and in need of
nurses. The last, he stated, could not be had for any price. Two of the
committee now stepped forward and nobly offered themselves as managers
of the hospital. They were Stephen Girard and Peter Helm.

Girard was now a man of wealth and influence, and with a brilliant
commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and
unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from
which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they
did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once.
Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger--the
management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was
at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines and nurses were procured,
and the very next day the committee were informed that the hospital had