For several years it was customary with Mrs. Graham to visit the New York hospital; and before the admirable provision since made for the separate care of those mentally deranged, she paid a particular attention to patients of this description.

To the apartments appropriated to sick female convicts in the state prison, she also made many visits; she met with some affecting circumstances among this class.

In the winter of 1807-8, when the suspension of commerce by the embargo rendered the situation of the poor more destitute than ever, Mrs. Graham adopted a plan best calculated in her view to detect the idle applicant for charity, and at the same time to furnish employment for the more worthy among the female poor.  She purchased flax, and lent wheels where applicants had none.  Such as were industrious, took the work with thankfulness and were paid for it; those who were beggars by profession never kept their word by returning for the flax or the wheel.  The flax thus spun was afterwards wove, bleached, and made into table-cloths and towels for family use.

Mrs. Graham used to remark, that until some institution should be formed to furnish employment for industrious poor women, the work of charity would be incomplete.  It was about this time that, deeming the duties too laborious for her health, she resigned the office of first directress of the Widows’ Society, and took the place of a manager.  She afterwards declined this also, and became a trustee of the Orphan Asylum Society, as more suited to her advanced period of life.

The lady to whom the following letter was addressed was Miss FARQUHARSON, a person of genuine piety and worth, whom Mrs. Graham had educated and prepared to become her assistant in teaching.  When Mrs. Graham retired from her school, Miss Farquharson declined to succeed her, preferring to accompany and enjoy the society of her patroness and friend.  Until 1804 she proved as efficient an assistant to Mrs. Graham in her charitable labors in the Widows’ Society and Sabbath-school, as she had been in her boarding-school.

During the prevalence of the yellow-fever in 1804, she was called to attend her own dying mother, and underwent so much fatigue, that on her return to Mrs. Graham she broke a bloodvessel, and for four months was confined to her room, during all which time Mrs. Graham attended her night and day.  Her medical attendants prescribed a long voyage and residence in a hot climate as the only means of saving her life.  About that time Mr. Andrew Smith was preparing to sail for the East Indies with his family, by the way of England.  With them she embarked.  She sojourned several weeks in Birmingham, and there the circumstances commenced which eventually led Miss Farquharson to become a missionary’s wife, and the first American missionary to foreign lands.  Her history has been published by Rev. Mr. Knill, in a tract entitled, “The Missionary’s Wife.”