Peirce never entered a school-room before her thirteenth year, when she was sent to the University School, which was under the care of the University of Pennsylvania. After studying there for two and
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FRANCES ELIZABETH PEIRCE.
one-half years, and being number one in her classes the entire time after the first six months, her desire and taste for elocution attracted the attention of the late Prof. J. W. Shoemaker. He induced her parents to place her under his instruction, and she
received from him more than ordinary care and attention, graduating in 1878 from the National School of Elocution and Oratory, of which he was president. She then accepted the position of lecturer on vocal technique in that institution, that department having been organized especially for her, but at the end of three years, her own teaching having increased so rapidly, she was compelled to
relinquish all outside work and devote herself to a school of elocution which she had opened in Philadelphia. In 1880 she established the Mt. Vernon Institute of Elocution and Languages in that city, erecting a building to suit her purposes. In 1884
the institute received a perpetual charter from the State. By dint of persistent effort and "hold-on-ativeness," as she expresses it, she has raised the school to its present high standing among the educational institutions of the country. A board of five directors constitutes the management of the school, and with it is also connected the Mt. Vernon Institute Association, consisting of fifty-
four members, twenty-five of whom form an advisory board. As a teacher she is preeminently fitted for her position, possessing as she does the innate faculty of discovering the capabilities and possibilities of her pupils, and of being able to adapt remedies to their faults, wherewith most quickly to overcome bad habits of delivery. Owing to her constant practice of physical exercises, Miss Peirce enjoys the best of health, and in the twelve years of her teaching has never once, through sickness, failed to fulfill her duties. All that she undertakes is pervaded by a high and noble purpose and firm resolution, and her niche in the world has been ably filled.
PERKINS, Mrs. Sarah Maria Clinton, temperance worker, born in Otsego, near Cooperstown, N. Y., 23rd April, 1824. She is the seventh child of Joel and Mary Clinton. On her father's side she is connected with De Witt Clinton, who was a cousin of her grandfather. On her mother's side she is descended from the Mathewson family, so well known in the early history of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Her mother was the daughter of a Puritan of the strictest type, and trained her daughter according to the good old-fashioned rules which came over in the Mayflower.
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SARAH MARIA CLINTON PERKINS.
Sarah early showed a fondness for books and for study, and eagerly read everything that came in her way. Misfortune came to the family. The dollars were few, and sickness brought its attendant evils. Her father died, when she was ten years of age, and the mother and children united their efforts »o keep the wolf from the door. Books were never given up by the little student. She learned the multiplication table by cutting it out of an old book and pinning it to the head of her bedstead, and studying it early in the morning, when first she awoke. Picking up bits of knowledge in the intervals of work, she progressed so well that, when eighteen years of age, she was teaching a district school in her own neighborhood. At die age of fifteen years she examined the evidences of Christianity
and sought for a brilliant conversion, but never found it in any remarkable way. Like a little child she consecrated herself to the Master, after a long struggle of doubt bordering on despair. At twenty. three years of age she became the wife of Rev. Owen Perkins, of Savoy, Mass. The years passed pleasantly in a little parsonage home, visiting the sick, comforting the mourners, teaching in the
