Not only was their grandfather a wealthy engineer and contractor, but their father, James Flintham How, was a vice-president and the General Manager of the Wabash Railroad.

While his brother chose to live as a hobo and spent his efforts trying to help the homeless, Louis How graduated from Harvard University in 1895,[2] then "became an artist and took to the gay bohemian life".

His manuscript was responsible for a revival of interest in early American poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman.

[5] How died from heart disease at his summer home in Gloucester, Massachusetts on October 3, 1947.

[1][2] How was discussed in an article in Reedy's Mirror (a journal published in his home town of St. Louis) in association with Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound in 1915 in an article written by Zoë Akins.