West Jersey Pioneer

Florence Nightingale and Mary Patten.

The following is one of the new passages introduced by Mr. Everett into his splendid oration on Washington as recently delivered at Cambridge. He is showing that though the days of chivalry have passed, true heroism yet survives:

Witness that heroic, aye that angelic vessel, Florence Nightingale, who, beneath the eyes of admiring Europe and admiring Asia, walked, with serene unconcern, for more than a twelve month, the pestilential wards of a hospital: witness our not less heroic country-woman Mary Patten, whose name is hardly known to the public, the wife of a merchant ship-master, who, far off on the lonely Pacific, with no eye to witness and no voice. to cheer her, when her husband was taken down by illness, now tended him in his cabin, as none but a devoted wife can tend a stricken husband, now took his place on the quarter-deck of his forlorn vessel; took her observation every day with the sextant, laid down the ship's course on the chart, cheered and encouraged the desponding crew, arrested the mutinous chief mate, who was for creeping into the nearest port, and who, on the score of seamanship alone, was not worthy to kiss the dust beneath the feet of the lion-hearted little woman; and who, poor young wife as she was, hardly twenty years of age, and already overshadowed with the sacred primal sorrow of her sex, yet with a strong will and a stout heart, steered her husband's vessel, through storm and through calm, from Cape Horn to San Francisco.