A lover of Greek and Roman culture, he gave them names such as Cleopatra, Cornelia, Sidonia and Aețiu. In 1878, he left Piatra Neamț for a period of three years, teaching first at the gymnasium in Tecuci and then at a normal school in Iași, and then lived in the former town from 1881 to 1885. He subsequently taught in Tecuci, Alexandria and Roman; during this period, from the mid-1880s to the late 1890s, he published only sporadically. His reluctance to write was deepened by the accidental death of his 18-year-old daughter in 1894. From 1898, he was a teacher at the Boarding High School in Iași. His literary debut consisted of verses that appeared in the Piatra Neamț newspaper "Corespondența provincială" in 1874. In the same town, he founded a newspaper, "Situațiunea", that briefly appeared in 1878. While living there, he began climbing the local mountains. Between 1881 and 1882, he was a school inspector in Neamț County, coming to know Ion Luca Caragiale in this capacity. From his return to Piatra Neamț in 1881 until 1885, Hogaș contributed to "Asachi" magazine; his first contributions to the "Amintiri din o călătorie" series appeared there from 1882 to 1884, but they had no resonance with critics. Invited to submit poetry to a Bucharest magazine, he refused, probably aware of their antiquated style. He continued the "Amintiri" series in Xenopol's magazine "Arhiva" from 1893 to 1902; these contributions also went unnoticed, as the magazine was not taken seriously. The 1906 establishment of "Viața Românească", the formation of a group surrounding the magazine and his resulting friendship with Garabet Ibrăileanu were crucial to his career; his "În munții Neamțului" and other travel notes appeared there from 1907 to 1912. He cut an odd and colorful picture at Iași: a large man, dressed unusually, wearing a woolen jacket in all seasons, with a huge overcoat and an equally sizable hat, wearing thick boots in winter and custom made sandals in summer, he hustled between the three high schools where he taught, after a breakfast consisting of a chunk of meat roasted over coals, seasoned with a handful of onions and washed down with a pot of coffee.