About two years later he took a job as a clerk and cashier for a wholesale grocer. In spring 1863, nearly a year after the Union army had begun its occupation of New Orleans, he and other family members crossed over to unoccupied Mississippi, where on 9 October 1863 Cable enlisted in the Confederate cavalry. Wounded twice during the war, Cable returned to New Orleans in May 1865 and worked at a series of clerkships until taking a job with a surveying party in July 1866. Several weeks later Cable became ill with malaria and was unable to work steadily for two years. First taking a job with a commission merchant, he then worked for two cotton businesses, and, when he married Louise Stewart Bartlett on 7 December 1869, he was secretary to the New Orleans Oil Works Company. The Cables' first child, Louise, was born the following November, to be followed by Mary in 1872, Lucy (1875), Margaret (1877), George (1878), Isabel (1883), William (1885), and Dorothea (1889).
By then Cable's literary career had begun with the first appearance of his "Drop Shot" column in the 27 February 1870 issue of the New Orleans Picayune. The early poems and sketches appearing in the column suggest the strengths that he was to demonstrate in writing the best of his short stories: sensitivity to the natural scene and to peculiar aspects of the life and history of the region.
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