Little Platt R. Spencer seemed born possessed of a desire to write. Living in the woods of the hills, with very little encouragement for learning, from his earliest years his great wish seemed to be to make letters. Up to his eighth year he had never owned a sheet of paper, but had marked on the smooth surface he had found. At this time he got hold of a big copper cent, almost the first money he had seen. He entrusted the coin to a lumberman, and asked him to buy a sheet of paper at Catskill, the lumber camp, twenty miles away. Late that night the messenger returned. The boy, wearied with waiting, had gone to bed. At the sound of the arrival, he awoke, his first thought being of the promised paper. He arose, and with feverish eagerness tried to make characters on the smooth, white surface. His hand was too untrained, and the rude characters little resembled letters. Disappointed, he returned to bed, only to take up the struggle on the following days, and conquer the difficulties. Paper he could not afford every day, especially as he soon moved with his father to the frontier, in Ohio. There, birch bark, sand banks, snow drifts and ice were his most frequent writing surfaces. His schooling was very meager,—a few months till he was twelve years old,—so he had to dig out his own learning by flickering candlelight. Books were scarce, and worth any hardship to procure. To continue the study of arithmetic, he had to have a book, and heard he could get one twenty miles away. It was winter, and he had no shoes, so he walked barefoot on the frozen ground and carried his treasure. Darkness came on and found him miles from home. His only food had been frozen turnips, found in a field. At length he found a settler’s cabin, where he was sheltered for the night. Under such conditions, he acquired a fair education and developed a system of penmanship that for years was almost universal in American schools. Spencerian business colleges were established in forty cities. The boy who learned writing with so much difficulty made the task easier for thousands of boys and girls, and lived a beautiful and useful life on the shores of Lake Erie, where he lies buried, at Geneva, Ohio.—Success.