ining, until his father suggested that he make believe he
was starting on a long war-path, from which there could be no honorable
return until his course was completed. Entering into the spirit of the
proposal, the Indian lad began his schooling at Flandreau Indian Agency,
and persisted for twelve long years. After graduating from college he
devoted himself to his people, and in many years since has accomplished
wonders for them, teaching them the patience he had himself learned, and
enabling them to understand that such patience and persistence always
brings its reward.

The experience of Isaac Pitman, the inventor of shorthand, was
different, yet, after all, it was much the same. As a boy he had little
education. But soon after he went to work he made up his mind to supply
the lack. The record of how he did this is one of the most remarkable
instances of courageous patience on record.

The long office hours at his place of employment, from six in the
morning until six at night, made study difficult, but he showed
conclusively that where there is a will there is a way, and that he had
the will. He was accustomed to leave his bed at four, that he might
study two hours before the beginning of the day's work. Two hours in the
evening also were set apart for study. Sometimes it happened that work
at the factory was light, and the young clerk was excused for the
morning. Instead of taking the time for sport, it was his habit to take
a book with him into the fields or under the trees.

Thomas Allen Reid, in his biography of Pitman says: "One of the books
which he made his companion in morning walks into the country was
Lennie's Grammar. The conjugation of verbs, list of irregular verbs,
adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, and the thirty-six rules of
syntax, he committed to memory so that he could repeat them in order.
The study of the books gave him a transparent English style."

His father was a subscriber to the local library. "I went regularly to
the library for fresh supplies of books," Isaac said, in 1863, "and thus
read most of the English classics. I think I was quite as familiar with
Addison, and Sir Roger, and Will Honeycomb, and all the Club, as I was
with my own brothers and sisters ... and when reading The Spectator at
that early age, I wished that I might be able to do something in
letters."

Before he left school he formed the habit of copying choice pieces of
poetry and prose into a little book which