the village of Greenwich, on a healthful, elevated site, possessing a fine prospect.  The corner-stone was laid on the 7th of July, 1807.  They erected a building fifty feet square; from time to time they proceeded to finish the interior of the building, and to purchase additional ground as their funds would permit; and such was the liberality of the legislature and of the public, that the society soon possessed a handsome building and nearly an acre of ground, all of which must have cost them little short of twenty-five thousand dollars.  In that house Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Hoffman spent much of their time; there they trained for eternity the children of those whose widowed dying mothers they had cheered with the hope that when they should be taken away, God would fulfil his gracious promise and preserve their fatherless children alive.

Mrs. Hoffman survived Mrs. Graham seven years.  Her end, like that of her friend, was peace.  But though God removed those mothers in Israel, their prayers are still before him, and the institution continues to prosper.  In 1836, the city having extended to where the asylum was situated, and the property at the same time increased in value, the society became desirous to remove where the children would enjoy purer air, and have greater convenience for a garden and pasture for cows.  With the advice of their patrons, they sold the property for about thirty-nine thousand dollars; purchased nearly ten acres of ground at Bloomingdale, and on the 9th of June the same year laid the foundation-stone of their present beautiful building.

In the Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the society for 1840, we find the following record of God’s goodness: 

“On no former occasion has the board of direction been privileged to make to the friends and patrons of this institution a more favorable report than the present.  The orphan’s home is completed, and the beautiful building on the banks of the Hudson is alike an ornament to the city and a memorial of the liberality of its inhabitants.  Within it are found, not only ample accommodations for a numerous family, but a place for the Lord, a habitation for the orphans’ God.  On the 19th of November last the chapel was opened for religious worship; the services were performed by reverend clergy of different denominations; and a highly respectable and apparently gratified audience attended.  All the children, one hundred and sixty-five in number, were present, from the infant in arms to the youth who will this day pronounce the valedictory.

“To those who have witnessed the progress of this institution from the small frame-house of 1806 to the noble edifice of 1840, accompanied by the recollection that the door has never been closed against the destitute orphan, how deep must be the conviction of an overruling Providence—­the truth of the declaration, that God is the father of the fatherless in his holy habitation, and the fulfilment of his gracious promise, ’Leave thy fatherless