Faulkner left high school without graduating and went to work in his grandfather's bank. He read widely, if narrowly, and dabbled in poetry and painting. Equally nourishing for his inner life was a friendship he began in 1914 with Phil Stone, a young Mississippian studying to be a lawyer but already lost to a life-long passion for literature. Stone, by the standards of his time and place, was a very sophisticated young man. From Stone the young Faulkner learned about a whole new world of modern culture. With Stone he held many long conversations about the problems of the South: conversations which blended criticism and nostalgia.