Many of the things which Carl Sandburg relishes I relish: the jingle of the "American language" in the making; the Great Lakes, prairies, mountains, and the diurnal and seasonal scene-shifting of the elements; all kinds of workmen with their tools in city and country, and the "feel" of an axe or shovel in my own hands; the thunder of overland trains and the cross-fire of banter in a barber shop; eating ham-and-eggs with a Chinese chemist at a wayside lunch-counter at four o'clock in the morning, sun-time; the mixed human contacts to be had, for example, in a "common" up-country smoker, where black men, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Japanese, Indians, and Germans commune happily in a thick blue mist, and a fluent young travelling man "making" the resort towns drops into the seat beside me and asks what "line" I am carrying, and I exchange matches and crackers with a Dutchman from Java in blue overalls moving from the sugar-beet fields of Wisconsin to the raspberry district of Michigan, accounting spontaneously for the "yoost" and the
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VIII
A Note on Carl Sandburg
