Summers were spent in the mountains of North Carolina, where he first came into contact with the "People of the Hills." There was a brief interlude of painting about Tryon, N.C., in a "cove" of the Appalachian ranges that catches the breath of spring before any of the others. The lessons of the brush were afterward remembered by the pen. Then there was a season spent in the far West recuperating from an illness. This was shortly before the World War. Mr. Heyward's "bit" was done in South Carolina in organizing war work among the negroes of his section in coöperation with certain gentlemen of Charleston who were chosen for their knowledge and tact. It was an interesting, a valuable, and a vital experience. In the meanwhile, there were a few short stones. The pen had been found. It was not quite sure yet what it had to say, but some of the methods of publishing and the way to an audience had at least become plain. The present writer remembers first meeting Mr. Heyward only a few months after the Armistice. He came into the room one day, naming a mutual literary acquaintance and a common interest in writing as the occasion for the call. He brought with him as his first impression an unusual sense of ease and virile-sensitiveness--an impression that remained. About the hospitable fire of one who was rich in the lore of the past, literary experience, and living, we continued to meet. The result of the association was an arrangement to collaborate on a book of poems in which it was agreed to treat some of the legends and the landscapes about Charleston from various points of view. Mr. Heyward's literary interest was at that time mainly in verse and the result was the publication the following year of _Carolina Chansons_. During the same year while the poems were underway, through the able assistance of many friends, there was organized in Charleston the _Poetry Society of South Carolina_. This in a certain sense proved to be the spark that kindled the now widely spread interest in modern poetry in the South. Requests for advice and assistance poured into the little "poetry office" at Charleston, and Mr. Heyward in particular, although he was then conducting an active business in the city, found himself called upon for lectures, readings and literary consultations throughout the South. It was in this way, as a poet, that his name first became generally known. In the meanwhile, he had been dividing his summer vacations between his own studio-cabin in the North Carolina Mountains and the MacDowell Colony at Peterborough, N.H. Under the combined inspiration of North and South Carolina landscapes and the facilities for undisturbed writing provided by the MacDowell Colony, his first book was followed about a year later by another volume of poems dealing most notably with the mountains of North Carolina and the Low Country of South Carolina. It was therefore entitled _Skylines and Horizons_.