Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MINNIE MURDOCH KENDRICK was born in Philadelphia, September fifth, 1849. A word of her parents is of interest in giving an insight into the varied elements which made a character conspicuous for its simplicity, its loyalty and its love of truth. Her father, Samuel Kiel Murdoch, brother of James E. Murdoch,the famous actor and Shakespearean reader, was endowed with a keen love of books, marked elocutionary ability and dreamy artistic tendencies; while her mother, Mary Hanna, aunt of Judge Hanna, President-Judge of the Orphans' Court, was practical to a degree, energetic, resourceful, with a keen sense of humor and an infinite capacity for achievement. The combination of these diametrically-opposed natures formed in the daughter one of rare mentality and reasoning power, together with an enthusiasm to overcome all obstacles in the path of fulfilment of a purpose. She attended school at the old Southwark Library, and later at the Mount Vernon Grammar School, Third and Catharine Streets, where many anecdotes are still told of the little, winsome child—her charm of voice andmanner, her spontaneity and her then marked ability. After waiting two years for the prescribed age, which was fourteen, she was sent to the High School under Mrs. Mary A. McManus. By a strange coincidence her sister, Gertrude Murdoch, succeeded Mrs. McManus as Principal of this school, having previously been teacher of elocution in the Girls' High School. Minnie Murdoch passed number one in June, 1863, and retained that rank all through the" High School, until her graduation under Professor Fetter. Her record during her student years in the High and Normal Schools was a brilliant one, ending in her graduation with first honors in June, 1866. In a yellowed newspaper clipping of that time we find this quaint no...