"We are yet one in Christ our head — united in him; and though she shall not return unto me, I shall go to her, and then our communion will be more full, more delightful, as it will be perfectly free from sin. Christ shall be our bond of union, and we shall be fully under the influence of it.
"Let me then gird up the loins of my mind, and set forward to serve my day and generation, to finish my course. The Lord will perfect what concerns me; and when it shall please him, he will unclothe me, break down these prison-walls, and admit me into the happy society of his redeemed and glorified members: then 'shall he wipe away all tears from my eyes,' and I shall taste the joys which are at his right hand, and be satisfied for evermore."
Mrs. Graham made it a rule to appropriate a tenth part of her earnings to be expended for pious and charitable purposes. She had taken a lease of two lots of ground on Greenwich-street from the corporation of Trinity church, with a view of building a house on them for her own accommodation; the building, however, she never commenced. By a sale of the lease, which her son Mr. Bethune made for her in 1795, she got an advance of one thousand pounds. So large a profit was new to her. "Quick, quick," said she, "let me appropriate the tenth before my heart grows hard." What fidelity in duty; what distrust of herself. Fifty pounds of this money she sent to Mr. Mason in aid of the funds he was collecting for the establishment of a Theological Seminary. Her own version of this matter we have in a letter to her familiar friend Mrs. Walker, of Edinburgh:
"1795.
"MY DEAR MRS. WALKER — My last informed you that we had been made to taste of the Lord's visitation — the yellow-fever — but in great mercy had been spared in the midst of much apparent danger. I have now in my house a girl who lost both father and mother, and many whole families were cut off; my house was emptied; my school broken up; we confined to town, and heavy duty laid upon us at the same time. I trembled again for fear of debt; but 'the Lord brought meat out of the eater.'
"Three years ago, when tried by having one house taken over my head, another bought, and obliged to move three times in as many years, some speculating genius brought me under the influence of the madness of the times, and persuaded me I might build without money. It is quite common here to build by contract. I could not purchase ground, but I leased two lots of church land, got a plan made out, and worried myself for six months, trying to hatch chickens without eggs. I had asked the Lord to build me a house, to give success to the means, still keeping in view covenant provision, 'what is good the Lord will give.' After many disappointments I said, Well; I have asked — I am refused — it is not good — the Lord will not give it: he will provide, but in his own way, not mine.
"Of course I had to pay ground-rent, which in three years amounted to two hundred and twenty dollars. I think I hear you say, I never could have believed that Mrs. Graham could be guilty of such folly — nor I; but seeing and hearing of many such things, I fancied myself very clever. Last year a basin was formed, and wharves around it, opposite to the said lots;
the epidemic raging on the other side of the city brought all the vessels that came in round to them, and great expectations were formed for this new basin; houses and stores sprung up like mushrooms, and Mr. Bethune sold my lease for one thousand pounds. Lo, and behold, part of it is already spent. All my provision through this wilderness has been so strongly marked by peculiar providences, my mind seems habituated to a sense of certainty. I feel my portion of earthly good safer and better in my Lord's hand than in my own."
In the ensuing year we find the following outbreathings of her rich Christian experience:
"JANUARY 3, 1796.