BRAVE WOMEN. Drs. Mary Palon, THE BRAVE WIFE. MARK TAPLEY was a philosopher. We don't mean to assert that our friend, who thought fate was against him because he was refused an opportunity of being, as Dickens tells us, "jolly" under creditable circumstances, had made any proficiency in the learning of the schools. Quite the contrary. Mark was innocent of learned lore. But for all that he was a philosopher. He sought an opportunity for the development of the power within himhe knew that it was in him, and he desired to test its existence by experiment and exercise. Unfortunately the opportunity to be brave, cheerful, or, as Mark puts it, "jolly," under adverse or unfavourable circumstances, is not rare or singular. If life's duties are met, not shirked, be the life what it may, and however circumstanced, abundant opportunity will be afforded for self-sacrifice, brave effort, and earnest endeavour. No need to seek in the swamps of the backwoods, or in any far-off scenes, for occasion and opportunity; there will come to every life, day by day, hour by hour, temptation, trial, and difficulty. If not in outward circumstances, in those inward feelings and dispositions that require determined striving and resolute fighting against; and which, when conquered, constitutes the conqueror a hero. The record of any brave man, or, better still, the record of any brave woman, striving with and overcoming calamity, wrong, and depressing circumstances, nerves to purpose and resolution; and if the relation does not actually make us stronger, we feel the stronger, and therefore the more capable of enterprise and endeavour. Who does not actually feel nobler, higherprincipled, and nerved, if needs be, to a life of heroism, by the absorbingly interesting incidents in the brief married life of Mrs. Patton? the facts of which may be thus briefly recorded: One day the people in the streets of New York observed a litter, evidently containing a sick person, carried up from the shipping to the Battery Hotel. Beside the litter walked a young creature, who, but for her care-worn countenance, might have been taken for a school-girl. Her story soon became known, and presently touched all hearts. She was twenty years of age. At seventeen she had married a sea captain, a gallant young fellow of five-and-twenty, she being a carefully-reared young lady of East Boston. Just after the marriage, Captain Patton was offered the command of a ship-the "Neptune's Car"-prepared and intended for the circumnavigation of the globe, and ready to sail immediately, but for the illness of the commander. Captain Patton declined the offer; declaring it impossible to leave his bride so soon and suddenly for so long a time. He was told that he would be allowed to take her with him. His new bride agreed, and they were on board within twelve hours of the command being offered! During that voyage she learned whatever her husband could teach her; and especially she became practised in taking observations, and in keeping the reckoning of the ship. She studied navigation, and made excellent progress. The voyage lasted seventeen months. Subsequently the captain and his wife sailed in their old ship for San Francisco, being so proud of the vessel as to pique themselves on reaching California sooner than two others which took their departure at the same time. It was this rivalry which first disclosed to Captain Patton the evil quality of his first-mate, who was not only lazy and negligent to a dangerous degree, but ill-disposed. He was evidently bent on carrying the ship into Valparaiso, for purposes of his own. Anxiety and toil told on the captain's health before Cape Horn was reached. He there deposed the first-mate from office, and in the effort to discharge the duty himself sank down in fever, which soon issued in congestion of the brain. Before he lost his reason he declared positively against going into Valparaiso, saying that the men would desert, and the cargo be lost before the consignees could arrive; and his honour and conscience were concerned in going on to the right port. This was enough. His wife determined that it should be done. As soon as her husband became hopelessly delirious, the first - mate attempted to assume authority, and wrote a letter to Mrs. Patton, charging her with the responsibility of all their lives if she opposed him. She told him that her husband had not trusted him while he was well, and that she would not trust him now her husband was ill. She assembled the crew, told them the facts, and appealed to them to disregard the first-mate, to accept her authority in her husband's place, and to obey the secondmate in the working of the ship. Every man of them agreed; and they sustained her well, so far as their power of support went. They looked with pity and reverence upon her as they saw her through the cabin windows at her desk, keeping the reckoning and making entries in the log. Noon and midnight she was on the deck taking observations. She marked the charts, made no mistakes, and carried the ship into port in the best condition on the 13th of November. She had studied the medical books on board, to learn how best to treat her husband's case; and she never left him, day or night, but to perform his duties in the ship. Happily he was a freemason: his brother masons at San Francisco befriended the captain and his wife, and sent them back by the first opportunity to New York. There they arrived wholly destitute-the husband blind, deaf, delirious, dying; the wife worn and grave, but active, resolute, and composed. The New York underwriters sent her an immediate gift of a thousand dollars; and the owners of the vessel and others took measures to testify their sense of the conduct by which a vast amount of property had been saved, and their interests and those of the crew conscientiously conserved under singular difficulty and extremity. With our Lady Fanshawes, Lucy Hutchinsons, and |