BAND.
Eng. by John Sartain.]

MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND.

There are some noble souls whose devotion to duty, to the welfare of the
suffering and sorrowing, and to the work which God has set before them,
is so complete that it leaves them no time to think of themselves, and
no consciousness that what they have done or are doing, is in any way
remarkable. To them it seems the most natural thing in the world to
undergo severe hardships and privations, to suffer the want of all
things, to peril health and even life itself, to endure the most intense
fatigue and loss of rest, if by so doing they may relieve another's pain
or soothe the burdened and aching heart; and with the utmost
ingenuousness, they will avow that they have done nothing worthy of
mention; that it is the poor soldier who has been the sufferer, and has
made the only sacrifices worthy of the name.

The worthy and excellent lady who is the subject of this sketch, is one
of the representative women of this class. Few, if any, have passed
through more positive hardships to serve the soldiers than she; but few
have as little consciousness of them.

Mrs. Mary Morris Husband, is a granddaughter of Robert Morris, the great
financier of our Revolutionary War, to whose abilities and patriotism it
was owing that we had a republic at all. She is, in her earnest
patriotism, well worthy of her ancestry. Her husband, a well-known and
highly respectable member of the Philadelphia bar, her two sons and
herself constituted her household at the commencement of the war, and
her quiet home in the Quaker City, was one of the pleasantest of the
many delightful homes in that city. The patriotic instincts were strong
in the family; the two sons enlisted in the army at the very beginning
of the conflict, one of them leaving his medical studies to do so; and
the mother, as soon as there was any hospital work to do was fully
prepared to take her part in it. She had been in poor health for some
years, but in her anxiety to render aid to the suffering, her own
ailings were forgotten. She was an admirable nurse and a skilful
housewife and cook, and her first efforts for the sick and wounded
soldiers in Philadelphia, were directed to the preparation of suitable
and palatable food for them, and the rendering of those attentions which
should relieve the irksomeness and discomforts of sickness in a
hospital. The hospital on Twenty-second and Wood streets, Philadelphia,
was the princ