His father was an under-pastor and organist in the little village of Wunsiedel, and lived on a pitiful salary; but, generous to a fault, he stripped off his own garments to clothe the poor, and sent the schoolmaster a meal every day, because, if possible, he was poorer than the preacher. In school, Jean Paul was a studious boy, almost envying every one who said his lessons well, and fond of his teachers and mates; but one of the boys having cut Paul's hand, the father at once took him home and became his instructor. A painstaking and conscientious man, he showed little aptness for his work, when he gave his boy, at nine years of age, a Latin dictionary to commit to memory! For four solid hours in the morning, and three in the afternoon, Paul and his brother learned grammatical lessons and Latin verses of which they did not understand a word. Still the boy grew more and more fond of books, and of Nature,--made clocks with pendulums and wheels; a sun-dial, drawing his figures on a wooden plate with ink; invented a new language from the calendar signs of the almanac; and composed music on an old harpsichord whose only tuning-hammer and tuning-master were the winds and the weather. When Paul was thirteen, the family moved to Schwarzenbach, where he made the acquaintance of a young pastor, Vogel, who owned quite a valuable library, and encouraged him to educate himself. Given free access to the books, he began to read eagerly. Thinking that he should never own volumes for himself, he made blank-books, of three hundred pages each, from his father's sermon-paper, and began the almost interminable labor of copying whatever he thought he should need in law, medicine, philosophy, theology, natural history, and poetry. For nearly four years he worked thus, till he had quite a library of his own, and a wealth of information in his brain, which proved invaluable in the writing of after years. Such a boy could not fail of success.