CHAPTER II.

SCENES OF CHILDHOOD.

The Mother's religious Exercises.-Converse with God.-Religious Studies.-Removal to Antigua.-Toilsome Journey through the Wilderness of New York. - Mrs. Major Brown. -Death of Dr. Graham.-Mrs. Graham goes to Scotland.-Establishes a School for Young Ladies.

THE religious exercises of Mrs. Graham at this period, both before and after the birth of Joanna, were peculiarly deep and decisive. The wild and beautiful scenery about her, combining the flowing river and ocean-like lake with the unbroken virgin forest, through which the roar of the great cataract could be heard, strongly impressed her poetical mind with a sense of the Divine majesty and love. The responsibilities of the young wife and mother, cast upon the care of Providence, far from her native land, her faithful parents, and the pious friends of her youth, and, not least, the difficulty of maintaining her Christian character amid such novel circumstances, and without her accustomed religious privileges, brought her into closer communion with God, making her stronger from consciousness of her entire dependence upon her sympathizing, ever-present Savior. It is true that, in her humility, she condemned herself as low in her religion; but, from her conscientious regard

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for the Sabbath, her devotional solitudes, her cheerfulness in the discharge of her many domestic cares amid the trying hinderances of garrison life, her anxious, affectionate desires for her husband's sanctification, her thankful study with him of Doddridge's Rise and Progress, and her frequent reminiscences in after life of her days at Niagara, all tend to the conviction that He who leads his children by ways that they know not was then educating her for a higher Christian strength and decision of character; nor can we doubt that her then infant child, unconscious in the arms of her young Indian nurse, borne among the flowers of her father's garden, or sleeping under the blessing of her mother's guardian, prayerful love, received a baptism from the Comforter, invoked by maternal faith and trust. He who sanctifies from the womb can give a blessing in the womb, and sanctify a mother's travail and nursing at the breast. The mystery of the new birth will not allow us to understand the ways of blessing God has for the early childhood of the little ones whom believing parents put into the Master's arms, craving for them the covenant blessing.

In 1772, the hostilities preceding the war of our Revolution becoming more serious, and it being thought by the British government to remove the Royal Americans from the danger of sympathy with the Whig spirit, then rapidly spreading, Dr. Graham's regiment was ordered to the island of Antigua. The doctor having gone to New York on an unsuccessful attempt

to sell his commission, that he might carry out his plan of purchasing a home in Western or Middle New York, Mrs. Graham was obliged to follow him to New York, with her children, assisted by two Indian captive girls which she had, out of kindly motives, received from their savage masters into her family, and who returned her care by a grateful attachment to her and her little ones. The route which the tender family pursued was by bateau to Oswego, thence over a portage to the Mohawk, somewhere near Oriskany, thence, by alternate canoe voyage and portage (over which the children were carried on the backs of Indians), to Schenectady, and by portage again to the Hudson at Albany. We have no particular record or memoranda of this journey, but how different must it have been through the almost unbroken wilderness, with only canoes to relieve the foot travel, from the means of passage now through the very garden of our beautiful, fertile, and prosperous state. Surely God, who watched over his predestined prophet in the bulrushes of the Nile, guarded and guided that little band through the wilderness and on the stream until they reached New York, the great city which was afterward to be so eminently blessed by the prayers and ministries of Isabella Graham and Joanna Bethune. While waiting at the sea-port for the sailing of the transport, Mrs. Graham and her young family were treated with most hospitable kindness by many Christian friends, to whom they were introduced by Mrs. Major Brown of the 60th, a daugh

ter of Mr. Vanbrugh Livingston; and made the valuable acquaintance of the Rev. Dr. John Rodgers, of the Presbyterian Church, to whose instructions many years after, on Mrs. Graham's second coming to New York (1789-90), Joanna attributed no small degree of the spiritual benefit she needed at the beginning of her Christian profession.

They sailed for Antigua November, 1772, when it pleased God sorely to chastise Mrs. Graham, first, by the death of her excellent mother, whose letters of affectionate counsel had been of such unspeakable value to her, and, a few months afterward, by the death of Dr. Graham, who died November, 1773, giving the strongest testimony that the blessing which his wife had so earnestly striven and prayed for had been secured through his own apprehending faith on Jesus Christ. Those who have read the memoirs of Mrs. Graham will remember that this was a turningpoint of her Christian character. Hitherto she had leaned much on her pious mother in matters of religion, and in affairs of this world on her stronghearted, affectionate husband. Now, motherless and a widow, sad and in poverty, she looked upon her little fatherless children, and cast herself and them on the covenant care of God alone. After the birth of a son she returned to Scotland (1775), where she found her father, now too aged for the trust from which he had derived his livelihood, living in a little cottage at Cartside, near Paisley. She lived with him in penury for about two years, when, seeking for a better sub