" The contrast between his school days and adult life should be
noted. We shall never hear of his having too much money after he became an
author.
In 1820 the boy returned with the Allans to Richmond, where he prepared for
college, and at the age of seventeen entered the University of Virginia.
"Here," his biographer says, "he divided his time, after the custom of
undergraduates, between the recitation room, the punch bowl, the
card-table, athletic sports, and pedestrianism." Although Poe does not seem
to have been censured by the faculty, Mr. Allan was displeased with his
record, removed him from college, and placed him in his counting house.
This act and other causes, which have never been fully ascertained, led Poe
to leave Mr. Allan's home.
Poe then went to Boston, where, at the age of eighteen, he published a thin
volume entitled _Tamerlane and Other Poems_. Disappointed at not being able
to live by his pen, he served two years in the army as a common soldier,
giving both an assumed name and age. He finally secured an appointment to
West Point after he was slightly beyond the legal age of entrance. The
cadets said in a joking way that Poe had secured the appointment for his
son, but that the father substituted himself after the boy died.
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