He graduated from high school in June 1897. He subsequently studied at Columbia University. His major was law, but he was more interested in writing. He learned several languages, including Spanish, German, and French. He paid the one-time enrollment fee to be able to learn a variety of subjects. He would sign up for a class and then later drop it. He again supported himself through college by writing boys' adventure stories and jokes. He also sold ideas to cartoonists. Using stenographers, he wrote up to 8,000 words of pulp fiction per day. His only complaint about his educational experience was that it failed to educate him about socialism. After leaving Columbia, he wrote four books in the next four years; they were commercially unsuccessful though critically well-received: "King Midas" (1901), "Prince Hagen" (1902), "The Journal of Arthur Stirling" (1903), and a Civil War novel, "Manassas" (1904).