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replying to her friend's importunate entreaties to be permitted to sit up with her, "You have done all for me you can do. I cannot rest without you go to bed." On this, her friend lay down without undressing. Mrs. Fletcher then inquired whether she was in bed; and, on being answered in the affirmative, said, "That's right. Now, if I can rest, I will; but let our hearts be united in prayer, and the Lord bless both thee and me." These were the last words she uttered. About one o'clock, the noise her breath had long made, ceased; and her friend, on hastening to the bed-side, found that the spirit had peacefully fled, leaving on her countenance the expression of quiet slumber.

MRS. ISABELLA GRAHAM.

ISABELLA MARSHALL, afterwards Mrs. Graham, was born July 29, 1742, in the shire of Lanark in Scotland. Her grandfather was one of the elders who quitted the Established Church with the Rev. Messrs. Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine. Her father, John Marshall, farmed a paternal estate called the Heads, near Hamilton, which he afterwards sold, and rented the estate of Eldersley, once the habitation of the renowned Wallace. There his daughter Isabella passed her childhood and her youth. In the woods of Eldersley, she selected a bush, to which she resorted for the purpose of devotion, before she had attained her tenth year. Both her parents were pious, and from a child she had been taught to seek the God of her fathers as the guide of her youth. To this favourite and, to her, sacred spot, she would repair under her childish troubles; and there, in pouring out her heart to her Heavenly Father, she has been visited with peace and Divine consolation.

Her education was of a higher kind than was usually bestowed in those days on young persons of her class in society. Her grandfather, whose dying bed she had assiduously attended, bequeathed her a few hundred pounds, which, with a soundness of judgement much above her years, she requested to have appropriated to the purpose of giving her a finished education. At ten years of age, she was sent to a boarding-school superintended by a lady of distinguished talents and piety, of the name of Morehead, to whose instructions she always acknowledged herself to be greatly indebted. She attended her school for seven successive winters. At the age of seventeen, Miss Marshall was admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in communion with the Presbyterian church at Paisley, under the

pastoral care of the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, afterwards President of Princeton college. We have no further particulars of her early life. In the year 1765, Miss Marshall, then in her twenty-fourth year, was married to Dr. John Graham, a gentleman of liberal education, practising as a physician at Paisley. About a year after their marriage, Dr. Graham received orders to join the regiment to which he was attached in his medical capacity, the Royal Americans, at that time stationed in Canada. Before they sailed, a plan was laid for their permanent residence in that country. Dr. Graham calculated on disposing of his commission, and purchasing a tract of land on the Mohawk river, to which Mr. Marshall, his father-in-law, was to follow with his family. But this was never to be realized.

The regiment was for several months quartered at Montreal, and here their eldest daughter was born. They afterwards removed to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario, and continued in garrison there for four years, which Mrs. Graham always considered as the happiest period of her life, so far as regarded temporal enjoyments. The society was select and agreeable, several of the officers being married, and the ladies being on the best terms with each other. But as the fort was remote from other settlements, Mrs. Graham, while here, was in a státe of destitution as to the ordinances of religion. She maintained, however, a conscientious observance of the Sabbath, and on those sacred days would wander into the surrounding woods with her Bible, to commune with God and her own heart in solitude.

At the commencement of the revolutionary struggle in America, the sixteenth regiment, to which Dr. Graham was attached, being composed chiefly of Americans, was ordered to the island of Antigua. In consequence of this, Dr. and Mrs. Graham, with their family, now consisting of three infant daughters, crossed the woods from Niagara to Oswegatche, and thence descended the river Mohawk to Schenec

tady, where leaving his family, the Doctor repaired to New York, in the hope of completing a negotiation for the sale of his commission, and purchasing a tract of land on which he might settle. But, not being able to perfect his arrangements in time, he was compelled to proceed with his regiment to the West Indies; and Mrs. Graham hastened with her family to join him at New York, whence they sailed together for Antigua.

On their arrival at St. John's, they were introduced to several respectable families, some of them eminent for piety, whose hospitality and kindness were a great solace to them under this unexpected change in their circumstances. It was not long before Mrs. Graham was placed in a situation which called for all the sympathy of friendship. Her husband was absent in St. Vincent's, where he was detained with his regiment for several months, when she received the afflictive tidings of the death of her valued mother. It should seem that her grief on this occasion was excessive, and preyed upon her mind; for, to rouse her from the morbid state in which he found her on his return, Dr. Graham was led to tell her, that God might perhaps call her to a severer trial by taking her husband also. These words, with whatever intention they were spoken, were too soon fulfilled. On the 17th of Nov. 1774, he was seized with a fever, which, though unattended for the first three days by alarming symptoms, terminated his existence on the 22d instant. The whole course of the Doctor's illness, says Mrs. Graham's Biographer *, presented a most interesting scene. "He calculated on death; expressed his perfect resignation; gave his testimony to the emptiness of a world, in which its inhabitants are too much occupied in pursuing bubbles, which vanish

"The Power of Faith, exemplified in the Life and Writings of the late Mrs. Isabella Graham, of New York." 12mo. New York printed: London reprinted. 1822.

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into air; and died in the hope of faith in that Divine Redeemer, who is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him. At the commencement of her husband's illness, Mrs. Graham entertained no apprehensions of danger to his life. When hope as to the continuance of temporal life was extinguished, her anxiety for his spiritual and eternal welfare exercised her whole soul. When he breathed his last, gratitude to God, and joy at the testimony he had given of dying in the faith of Jesus, afforded a support to her mind, which the painful feelings of her heart could not immediately shake: but when the awful solemnities were over earth to earth, dust to dust-and the spirit gone to God who gave it when all was still, and she was a widow indeed --that tenderness of soul and sympathy of friendship, for which Mrs. Graham was ever remarkable, were brought into severe and tumultuous exercise. Her husband, companion, protector, was gone; a man of superior mind, great taste, warm affection, and domestic habits. She was left with three daughters, the eldest of whom was not more than five years of age, and with the prospect of having another child in a few months. Of temporal property she possessed very little she was at a distance from her father's house: the widow and the fatherless were in a foreign land. The change in her circumstances was as sudden as it was great."

All her pleasing plans, all her cherished prospects, were thus cut off in a moment. But the claims of a young family, now wholly dependent on her for their sustenance, prevented her from sinking into that morbid state of desponding grief which she appears to have sunk into under the pressure of a less heavy and trying calamity. Her situation roused her to exert all the energies of her character. On examining into her husband's affairs, she found that there remained not quite two hundred pounds sterling in his agent's hands. These circumstances

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