mean for your servants as well as for your children, and God will, in all probability, make you a mother in Israel, the mother of many spiritual children, and turn your captivity into rejoicing, and fill your mouth with songs of praise; or should you not have this comfort, should the night of adversity last to the very valley of the shadow of death, the morning of eternal rest shall then beam forth upon your own soul, and your prayers may be answered for others, when the eyes that wept and the breast that heaved are at rest in the dust.  O, then, my sister, possess your soul in patience, and seek to make daily advances in holiness.”

CHAPTER IX.

ORPHAN ASYLUM SOCIETY—­FOREIGN
MISSIONARIES—­LETTERS.

On the 15th of March, 1806, the female subscribers to proposals for providing an asylum for orphan children met at the City Hotel; Mrs. Graham was called to the chair, a society organized, and a board of direction chosen, Mrs. Hoffman was elected the first directress of the Orphan Asylum Society.  Mrs. Graham continued in the office of first directress of the Widows’ Society, but took a deep interest in the success of the Orphan Asylum also; she, or one of her family, taught the orphans daily, until the funds of the institution were sufficient to provide a teacher and superintendent.  She was a trustee at the time of her decease.  The wish to establish this new society was occasioned by the pain which it gave the ladies of the Widows’ Society to behold a family of orphans driven, on the decease of a widow, to seek refuge in the almshouse; no melting heart to feel, no redeeming hand to rescue them from a situation so unpromising for mental and moral improvement.

“Among the afflicted of our suffering race,” thus speaks the constitution of the society, “none makes a stronger or more impressive appeal to humanity than the destitute orphan.  Crime has not been the cause of its misery, and future usefulness may yet be the result of its protection; the reverse is often the case of more aged objects.  God himself has marked the fatherless as the peculiar subjects of his divine compassion.  ’A Father of the fatherless is God in his holy habitation,’ ’When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.’  To be the blessed instrument of, divine Providence in making good the promise of God, is a privilege equally desirable and honorable to the benevolent heart.’”

And truly God has made good his promise towards this benevolent institution.  He has crowned the undertaking with his remarkable blessing.  It was begun by his disciples in faith, and he has acknowledged them in it.  Having for fourteen months occupied a hired house for an asylum, the ladies entertained the bold idea of building an asylum on account of the society.  They had then about three hundred and fifty dollars as the commencement of a fund for the building; they purchased four lots of ground in