Charleston, at a time when to be properly born in Charleston meant to
be born to the purple. William Gilmore, alas! did not inherit that
imperial color. He sprang from the good red earth, whence comes the
vigor of humanity, and dwelt in the rugged atmosphere of toil which
the Charleston eye could never penetrate. Politically, the City by the
Sea led the van in the hosts of Democracy; ethically, she remained far
in the rear with the Divine Right of Kings and the Thirty-Nine
Articles of Aristocracy.

So Charleston took little note of the boy whose father failed in trade
and fared forth to fight British and Indians under Old Hickory and to
wander in that far Southwest known as Mississippi to ascertain whether
that remote frontier might offer a livelihood to the unfortunate. The
small William Gilmore, left in the care of his grandmother, was
apprenticed to a druggist and became a familiar figure on the streets
of Charleston as he came and went on his round of errands. Small
wonder that the Queen of the Sea, having swallowed his pills and
powders in those early days, had little taste for his literary output
in after years.

In Charleston he not only learned the drug business, but took his
first course in the useful art of deception, reading and writing
verses by the light of a candle concealed in a box, to hide its rays
from his thrifty grandmother, who was adverse not only to the waste of
candles but to the squandering of good sleep-time.

Fortunately, she had no objection to furnishing him with entertainment
in off hours. For the material of much of his work in after life was
he indebted to the war stories and ancient traditions that she told
her eager little grandson in those 'prentice days. But for her olden