y 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 be