Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society.

At each return of this season, the Managers of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society have been permitted to greet their friends and patrons with feelings of gratitude and hope,—gratitude, that they are enabled to assemble together again, on a tour of renewed and pleasant duties, and hope that they may be aided in the work that is ever before them—to ameliorate the condition of indigent and distressed members of their religious community. The records of the past year show that the funds have been disposed of in furnishing nurses and nourishment to suffering invalids—in assisting an industrious widow to maintain her children—in helping travellers on their way—and in supplying ordinary comforts to others, whose scanty means required aid from the hand of charity.

The Board were also called on to take charge of a helpless infant, whose mother shortly after its birth was seized with the most sad affliction “that flesh is heir to,” a bereavement of reason. In that pitiable condition she was conveyed to, and was for many months a tenant of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the insane; but the managers are happy to state, that she is again restored to health, and has returned to the house of her husband, where it is hoped she will soon be capable of resuming the care of her children. Another instance of mental derangement has also claimed the attention of the Board, and is now a pensioner on the charity. Alas! they fear a more hopeless sufferer; as no bodily infirmity can be traced as the cause of her malady. She is placed under medical treatment, at the same institution; and if it pleases God to restore her, her prayers of thanksgiving will be joined to those who sympathize in her present affliction. She has been a faithful daughter of Israel, and often resorted to the house of God. She, too, is a wife and mother,—was (in years gone by) a member of this society, and helped to raise the funds out of which it is now her unhappy lot to require protection,—whilst, were she possessed of wealth, her condition would be no less pitiable. An eminent English Poet, who was himself a victim to the same malady, has thus touchingly described insanity:

‘Tis not as heads that never ached suppose
Forg’ry of fancy, and a dream of woes,—
Man is a harp whose chords elude the sight
Each yielding harmony, disposed aright;
The screws reversed, (a task which if he please
God in a moment executes with ease,)
Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose
Lost, till he tunes them, all their power and use.”

In no science has the present age made greater Improvement, than in the humane treatment of the insane. No longer is the stricken spirit subject to cruelty and fear—the image of God is now respected by his fellow-man, even when the light of reason is obscured. There is consolation in knowing, while friends are consigned for care or safekeeping into the institution provided for their use, that they will he kindly as well as skilfully treated.

The Treasurer’s account furnishes a statement or the property or the Society, and amount of annual expenditure. It will there be seen too, how greatly indebted we are to the gentlemen for the liberal provision accruing from the Hebrew Benevolent Ball, which so materially increases our sphere of usefulness. We know that every heart and tongue present, will utter a grateful response to our already expressed thanks and we trust the desire to emulate their benevolence will induce those who are members to persevere in their contributions, and influence the young wives and mothers in Israel to enrol their names, and secure to the rising generation the same efficient aid, which their mothers have afforded the poor in their days. The Scriptures tell us that “the poor will never cease out of the land.”—God has given them to the care of those on whom He has bestowed the blessings of health to seek for them; and of wealth, to provide for them.

Treasurer's Account
for the year ending November 4th, 5606.

List of Securities owned by the Society.