Mrs. Mary N. Kincaid

 

Mrs. Mary N. Kincaid, Principal of the Girls’ High School.—The really successful educator is born, not made.  About the same qualities are necessary in the educator as must be possessed by the successful general.  Undeviating kindness to capture the heart, and unvarying firmness to common respect, united to in contestible knowledge of the minutest details of the chosen calling, and the road to eminent success is wide open to the educator not less than to the general.  Both are leaders because it is fit that they should be, and the fitness is as apparent to those who gladly follow as to themselves, and frequently more so.  General Grant and General Lee would have made capital educators, and would have possessed the entire confidence and respect of every pupil worthy of enlightened Christianization.  Indeed the latter, when the cause he had espoused collapsed, turned naturally to training the minds of young men.  It would have been as impossible for either of these men to have shirked duty, to have been satisfied with an imperfect knowledge of any matter under investigation, as it would have been for the subject of this sketch.  Neither ever rested while living, because neither ever reached the point where there was no more to learn, and our subject continues in the true line of an exact parallel with those honored great men.

 

Mrs. Kincaid was born in Pennsylvania, and accompanied by her parents to this State early in the ‘50s, when she was but a child.  Her mother was a woman of marked ability and great culture, and her mental qualities were transmitted to the daughter, who could not help receiving all the accomplishments her gifted mother could impart.  She was an early student in Benicia Seminary, and graduated with honor after a six years’ course.  During and subsequently to that course of mental training, her opportunities for broadening her attainments were very superior, because of the aid of accomplished private tutors.

 

For more than twenty years Mrs. Kincaid has been closely connected with the management of the public schools of San Francisco.  For a time she served as vice-principal of the Cosmopolitan Grammar School.  From there she was promoted to the normal department of the Girls’ High School, which position she filled with conspicuous ability for fourteen years.  Then the authorities were pleased to grant her a much-needed leave of absence, which she improved by a trip to Europe, and spent a busy year among the savants and educators of the old world.  Notwithstanding the innate modesty and unobtrusive character of Mrs. Kincaid, the fraternal instinct of educators abroad gave her every facility for improving her holiday by gaining a close insight into such educational methods as are peculiar to Europe, and her happy genius enables her to adopt any that seem superior to our own.

 

During the absence of Mrs. Kincaid she was elected principal of the Girls’ High School of San Francisco, and it is not at all surprising that the first knowledge she had of the high honor and increased responsibility intended her was contained in the notice of her appointment.  That is the position Mrs. Kincaid now holds –a highly honorable position, honorably won.

 

For many years Mrs. Kincaid, in  common with a host of other bright intellects, has been a close student metaphysics, psychology and kindred branches of abstruse science.  The results of her extended researches have received the endorsement of those best qualified to form a correct estimate of the value of her work.  The opportunities for continuing her investigation of these subjects while abroad were pre-eminently favorable, and her friends in America are all the richer by reason of what she learned during her vacation.

 

Here we close our brief and very imperfect sketch of one who is devoting her life to the improvement of her young country-women.  Not by any means is the subject closed.  Her field for usefulness is being extended by Mrs. Kincaid every day, and the promise is that grand as have been her achievements in the past those in the future will be far more resplendent, and the parallel which we under-took to draw in the beginning of our sketch will be continued and emphasized by Mrs. Kincaid until the “Well done, good and faithful servant,” shall appropriately close her in valuable work.