of the term "orphan" had been settled; it was at length, after a term of years, twenty, I think, decided, that the true meaning and intent of Stephen Girard, the wise founder of the institution, was to make it a charity for those children who had lost both parents.
"I should not think," said Hastings, on hearing this from Edgar, "that any one could fancy, for a moment, that Girard meant any thing else."
"Why no, neither you nor I, nor ninety-nine out of a hundred, would decide otherwise; but it seems a question was raised, and all the books of reference were appealed to, as well as the poets. In almost every case, an orphan was said to be a child deprived of one or both parents; and, what is very singular, the term orphan occurs but once throughout the Old and New Testaments. In Lamentations it says, 'We are orphans, and fatherless, and our mothers are as widows.' Now, in the opinion of many, the orphan and fatherless, and those whose mothers are as widows, here mentioned, are three distinct sets of children—that is, as the lament says, some of us are orphans, meaning children without father and mother, some of us are fatherless; and the third set says, 'our mothers are as widows.' This means, that in consequence of their fathers' absence, their mothers were as desolate and helpless as if in reality they were widows by the death of their husbands. This text, therefore, settles nothing. Girard, like all the unlettered men of the age, by the term orphan, understood it to mean a child without parents."
"I very well remember," said Hastings, "that on another occasion when the term came in question, I asked every man and woman that worked on and lived near the great canal, what they meant by orphan, and they invariably, without a single exception, said it meant a child without parents."
