Some of his aristocratic playmates remembered to his discredit that he
was the child of strolling players, and their attitude helped to add a
strain of defiance to an already intensely proud nature. Though kindly
treated by his foster parents, this strange boy longed for an
understanding sympathy that was not his. Once he thought he had found
it in Mrs. Jane Stannard, mother of a schoolmate; but the new friend
soon died, and for months the grief-stricken boy, it is said, haunted
the lonely grave at night and brooded over his loss and the mystery of
death--a not very wholesome experience for a lonely and melancholy lad
of fifteen years.
At the University he drank wine, though not intemperately, and played
cards a great deal, the end of the term finding him with gambling
debts of twenty-five hundred dollars. These habits were common at the
time, and Edgar did not incur any censure from the faculty; but
Mr. Allan declined to honor the gambling debt, removed Edgar, and
placed him in his own counting room. Such a life was too dull for the
high-spirited, poetic youth, and he promptly left his home.
Going to Boston, he published a thin volume of boyish verse,
"Tamerlane, and Other Poems," but realizing nothing financially,[1] he
enlisted in the United States Army as Edgar A. Perry. After two years
of faithful and efficient service, he procured through Mr.
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