At the age of fourteen Ella Wheeler's education, "excellent in grammar, spelling and reading, but wretched in mathematics," was completed so far as the rural school was concerned. Sometime later, through great sacrifice on the part of her people, she was placed for one term in the University of Wisconsin. Of this experience she says: "I was not at all happy there; first, because I knew the strain it put upon the home purse; second, because I felt the gulf between myself and the town girls, whose gowns and privileges revealed to me for the first time, the different classes in American social life; and third, because I wanted to write and did not want to study." Thus her school work ended and her acquisition of knowledge necessary to furnish details for her emotional poems has been made through her individual study since the University experience. Ella Wheeler's struggle to become a writer is one of the most inspiring stories among Wisconsin writers. A weekly paper came to the home and besides this there was an old red chest in their upstairs wherein there was kept the often-read copies of Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels, John Gilpin's Ride, and a few of Shakespeare's plays. In addition to these, friends had sent the family the New York Ledger and the New York Mercury. The serial stories of these papers furnished not only pleasing reading, but models of plots and of forms of expression which became the guide to her in the art of story writing. When Ella was thirteen years old the Mercury ceased to come to her home, and she regretted the loss of the stories so much that she determined to write something for the paper with the hope that the publisher would pay for her article through subscription. After some delay this brought the much coveted subscription and she says: "Perhaps the most triumphant and dramatic hour of my life was when I set forth and announced to the family that my literary work had procured the coveted Mercury for our united enjoyment." This experience led her to write extensively for the magazines and papers, a list of which a University friend had sent her. The articles which they accepted soon enabled her to supply the home with many periodicals and books and other articles of home use. She was not content with writing essays very long, but soon undertook the production of verse. Her first poem was rejected by the Mercury with some degree of scorn, but she soon offered it to other papers and so continued until she found a publisher. Very frequently some of her articles would be returned as many as nine times before she found a publisher.