have opened to him.

Drugs, considered as a lifelong pursuit, did not appeal to the youth
who had been writing verses ever since he had arrived at the age of
eight years and now held a place in the poet's corner of a Charleston
paper. He went into the law office of his friend, Charles E. Carroll,
where his perusal of Blackstone was interspersed with reading poetry
and writing Byronic verses.

While thus variously engaged he received an invitation to visit his
father in the wilds of Mississippi, a call to which his adventurous
spirit gave willing response. Were there not Indians and other wild
things and the choicest assortment of the odds and ends of humanity
out there, just waiting to be made useful as material for the pen of
an ambitious romancer? Through untrodden forests he rode in a silence
broken only by his horse's feet and the howl of wolves in the
distance. To all the new views of the world he kept open the windows
of his mind and they were transmitted to his readers in the years to
come. If he did not sleep with head pillowed upon the grave of one of
De Soto's faithful followers, he at least thought he did, and the
fancy served him as the theme of verse. And those varying types of
human nature and beast nature--do they not all appear again upon the
printed page?

When the end of his visit came his father pleaded:

"Do not think of Charleston. Whatever your talents they will there be
poured out like water on the sands. Charleston! I know it only as a
place of tombs."