<P> Within a couple of years, the Crane family suffered more losses . First, Townley and his wife lost their two young children . His wife Fannie died of Bright's disease in November 1883 . Agnes Crane became ill and died on June 10, 1884, of meningitis at the age of 28 . </P> <P> Crane wrote his first known story, "Uncle Jake and the Bell Handle", when he was 14 . In late 1885, he enrolled at Pennington Seminary, a ministry - focused coeducational boarding school 7 miles (11 km) north of Trenton . His father had been principal there from 1849 to 1858 . Soon after her youngest son left for school, Mrs. Crane began suffering what the Asbury Park Shore Press reported as "a temporary aberration of the mind ." She had apparently recovered by early 1886, but later that year, her son, 23 - year - old Luther Crane, died after falling in front of an oncoming train while working as a flagman for the Erie Railroad . It was the fourth death in six years among Stephen's immediate family . </P> <P> After two years, Crane left Pennington for Claverack College, a quasi-military school . He later looked back on his time at Claverack as "the happiest period of my life although I was not aware of it ." A classmate remembered him as a highly literate but erratic student, lucky to pass examinations in math and science, and yet "far in advance of his fellow students in his knowledge of History and Literature", his favorite subjects . While he held an impressive record on the drill field and baseball diamond, Crane generally did not excel in the classroom . Not having a middle name, as was customary among other students, he took to signing his name "Stephen T. Crane" in order "to win recognition as a regular fellow". Crane was seen as friendly, but also moody and rebellious . He sometimes skipped class in order to play baseball, a game in which he starred as catcher . He was also greatly interested in the school's military training program . He rose rapidly in the ranks of the student battalion . One classmate described him as "indeed physically attractive without being handsome", but he was aloof, reserved and not generally popular at Claverack . Although academically weak, Crane gained experience at Claverack that provided background (and likely some anecdotes from the Civil War veterans on the staff) that proved useful when he came to write The Red Badge of Courage . </P> <P> In mid-1888, Crane became his brother Townley's assistant at a New Jersey shore news bureau, working there every summer until 1892 . Crane's first publication under his byline was an article on the explorer Henry M. Stanley's famous quest to find the Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Africa . It appeared in the February 1890 Claverack College Vidette . Within a few months, Crane was persuaded by his family to forgo a military career and transfer to Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, in order to pursue a mining engineering degree . He registered at Lafayette on September 12, and promptly became involved in extracurricular activities; he took up baseball again and joined the largest fraternity, Delta Upsilon . He also joined both rival literary societies, named for (George) Washington and (Benjamin) Franklin . Crane infrequently attended classes and ended the semester with grades for four of the seven courses he had taken . </P>

Who wrote the army's first blue book