Carl Sandburg

Fellow Citizens

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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