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240 in his sympathies, but all American. After leaving Columbia University, he set up as school-teacher in 'a (more or less) rural community.' Then he became instructor of Latin at Morristown High School, New Jersey, and while at Morristown he married. 'At the conclusion of a year's teaching,' writes Robert Cortes Holliday, in the prefatory Memoir to Kilmer's poems, 'he tore up the roots he had planted, and, together with the young lady he had married and the son born to them, and with a few youthful poems in his pocket, he advanced upon the metropolis, even in the classic way, on the ancient quest of conscious talent.'

He began in New York as editor of a journal about horses, of which he knew nothing; then for a short time he was a retail salesman in Scribner's Sons' book store, and one takes it that his early poem, 'In a Book Shop':

dates from those days. He withdrew from the book shop to do strenuous work