s 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
tales, the romances of Revolutionary South Carolina and the shivery
fascination of "Dismal Castle" might have been unknown to future
readers.

All the region around Charleston, so rich in historic memories, was an
inspiration to the future romance writer. The aged trees festooned
with heavy gray moss lent him visions of the past to reappear in many
a volume. In his boat in Charleston harbor, and on the sands looking
out over the ocean, he gathered that collection of sea pictures which
adorned his prose and verse in the years to come.

Over on Morris Island glowed the Charleston light, "the pale,
star-like beacon, set by the guardian civilization on the edges of the
great deep." Lying on the shore he watched "the swarthy beauty, Night,
enveloped in dark mantle, passing with all her train of starry
servitors; even as some queenly mourner, followed by legions of gay
and brilliant courtiers, glides slowly and mournfully in sad state and
solemnity on a duteous pilgrimage to some holy shrine." He saw "over
the watery waste that sad, sweet, doubtful light, such as Spenser
describes in the cathedral wood: 'A little glooming light, most like a
shade.'" Drifting about in his boat he might pass Long Island, where
in 1776 the ocean herself fought for Charleston, interposing an
impassable barrier to the advance of Sir Henry Clinton.

While sea and shore and sky and earth were giving him of their best,
his father came back with innumerable stories of adventure that would
of themselves have set up a young romancer in business. Having talked
his mind dry of experiences he returned to Mississippi to make another
collection of thrilling tales, leaving William Gilmore, Jr., with a
mental outlook upon life which the glories of Charleston could never
have opened to him.

Drugs, considered as a lifelong pursuit