CHAPTER VII.
BENEVOLENT LABORS — MRS. HOFFMAN — CORRESPONDENCE.
THE "Society for the relief of Poor Widows with small Children," having received a charter of incorporation, and some pecuniary aid from the Legislature of the state, the ladies who constituted the board of direction were engaged in plans for extending their usefulness: Mrs. Graham took an active part in executing these plans. The Society purchased a small house, where they received work of various kinds for the employment of their widows. They opened a school for the instruction of their orphans, and many of Mrs. Graham's former pupils volunteered their services, taking upon themselves, by rotation, the part of instructors. Besides establishing this school, Mrs. Graham selected some of the widows best qualified for the task, and engaged them, for a small compensation, to open day schools for the instruction of the children of widows in distant parts of the city: she also established two Sabbath-schools, one of which she superintended herself, and the other she placed under the care of her daughter. Wherever she met with Christians sick and in poverty, she visited and comforted them; and in some instances, opened small subscription lists to provide for their support.
She attended occasionally for some years at the almshouse, for the instruction of the children there in religious knowledge: in this work she was much assisted by an humble and pious female friend, who
was seldom absent from it on the Lord's day. In short, her whole time was occupied in searching out the distresses of the poor, and devising measures to comfort and establish them to the extent of her influence and means. At the same time, far from arrogating any merit to herself, she seemed always to feel how much she was deficient in following fully the precepts and the footsteps of her beloved Lord and Saviour, who "went about doing good."
It was often her custom to leave home after breakfast, taking with her a few rolls of bread, and return in the evening about eight o'clock. Her only dinner on such days was her bread, and perhaps some soup at the soup-house, established by the Humane Society for the poor, over which one of her widows had been, at her recommendation, appointed. She and her venerable companion, Mrs. Sarah Hoffman, second directress of the Widows' Society, travelled many a day and many a step together in the walks of charity. Mrs. Graham was a Presbyterian, Mrs. Hoffman an Episcopalian. Those barriers, of which such an unhappy use has been made by sectarians to separate the children of God, fell down between these two friends at the cry of affliction, and were consumed on the altar of Christian love. Arm in arm, and heart to heart, they visited the abodes of distress, dispensing temporal aid from the purse of charity, and spiritual comfort from the word of life.
At each annual meeting, Mrs. Graham usually gave an address to the Society, with a report of the proceedings of the managers through the preceding year.
In April, 1800, she stated that "again the pestilence had emptied the city; again every source of industry
was dried up; even the streams of benevolence from the country failed. Those storehouses, from which relief was issued to thousands in former calamities, now disappointed their hopes; and those spared by the pestilence were ready to perish by the famine. Such widows as had no friends in the country, under whose roof they might for a time seek shelter, were shut up to the only relief within their power, even to that society which had formerly saved them in many a strait. They came, were received with tenderness, assisted with, food, advice, and medicine.