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Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

"Fellow Citizens"
(1916)

 

    I drank musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with
         the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter
         one night
    And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker,
         he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had
         a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere.
    Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertising
         Association on the trade resources of South America.
    And the way he lighted a three-for-a-nickel stogie and
         cocked it at an angle regardless of the manners of
         our best people,
    I knew he had a clutch on a real happiness even though
         some of the reporters on his newspaper say he is
         the living double of Jack London's Sea Wolf.
    In the mayor's office the mayor himself told me he was
         happy though it is a hard job to satisfy all the office-
         seekers and eat all the dinners he is asked to eat.
    Down in Gilpin Place, near Hull House, was a man with
         his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache,
    And he had it all over the butter millionaire, Jim Kirch
         and the mayor when it came to happiness.
    He is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only
         makes them from start to finish, but plays them
         after he makes them.
    And he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut bottom
         he offered for seven dollars and a half if I wanted it,
    And another just like it, only smaller, for six dollars,
         though he never mentioned the price till I asked him,
    And he stated the price in a sorry way, as though the
         music and the make of an instrument count for a
         million times more than the price in money.
    I thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about God.
    There was light in his eyes of one who has conquered
         sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or worth
         conquering.
    Anyway he is the only Chicago citizen I was jealous of
         that day.
    He played a dance they play in some parts of Italy
         when the harvest of grapes is over and the wine
         presses are ready for work.

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