The most of his early education was obtained in a printing office, and for a time he attended the Union Grammar School at Lewes. In the fall of 1879 he entered the Academy at Newark, Del. He completed the curriculum of the preparatory school, and the next year enrolled as a freshman at Delaware College, from which he graduated, 1884. In college he was active in all student organizations and all the pleasant phases of student life. He showed a decided inclination for literary studies and English composition, in which he became proficient. He established the “Delaware College Review,” and was chosen by his fellow students its first editor-in-chief and business manager. He gave the paper a firm foundation, with a large circulation and liberal advertising patronage. and it is to-day one of the rnost creditable college papers in the country. He was a popular member of the Delta Literary Society, and at its forty-ninth anniversary was chosen to deliver the farewell address. During one of his summer vacations, while yet a boy, he successfully edited and published the ‘Record,” a weekly paper at Rehoboth, a well-known Delaware watering place. In Nov., 1884, he assumed charge of his father’s paper, the “Breakwater Light,” as its editor and proprietor, and under his management it was successful, and exerted much influence in the lower part of Delaware. It is in political work that he has made his mark. In Nov., 1886, he left Lewes and went to Wilmington, where lie began the study of law in the office of Henry C. Conrad, and was soon drawn into political circles, and became known as a vigorous advocate of the principles of the Republican party. Along about 1886 the Republican party was in a disorganized condition, and there was a growing dissatisfaction in the Democratic party, and young Knowles, quickly grasping the situation, at once joined the Independent Temperance Reform movement, into which many Democrats were drawn; the Republicans gave quiet but unanimous support to it, and came very nearly defeating the Democrats, the credit of which was due largely to the superior work of Mr. Knowles, and finally resulted in the success of the Republican party in 1888, when Anthony Higgins was elected United States senator, whose cause was ardently espoused by Knowles, and as a reward for his services to his party he was appointed by President Harrison, 1889, United States consul to Bordeaux,

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