With each song he gave verbal footnotes.
The songs Sandburg sang often reminded listeners of songs of a kindred character they knew entirely or in fragments.
Often these listeners would refer Sandburg to persons who had similar ballads or ditties.
In due time Sandburg was a walking thesaurus of American folk music.

After he had finished the first two volumes of his Lincoln, Sandburg went to work assembling a book of songs out of hobo and childhood days and from the memory of songs others had taught him.
He rummaged, found composers and arrangers, collaborated on the main design and outline of harmonization with musicians, ballad singers, and musicologists.

The result was a collection of 280 songs, ballads, ditties, brought together from all regions of America, more than one hundred never before published: The American Songbag.
Each song or ditty was prefaced by an author's note which indicated the origin and meaning of the song as well as special interest the song had, musical arrangement, and most of the chorus and verses.

The book, published in 1927, has been selling steadily ever since.
As Sandburg said at the time: "It is as ancient as the medieval European ballads brought to the Appalachian Mountains, it is as modern as skyscrapers, the Volstead Act, and the latest oil well gusher".

Schopenhauer never learned
Sandburg is in constant demand as an entertainer.
Two things contribute to his popularity.
First, Carl respects his audience and prepares his speeches carefully.
Even when he is called upon for impromptu remarks, he has notes written on the back of handy envelopes.
He has his own system of shorthand, devised by abbreviations: "humility" will be "humly", "with" will be "w", and "that" will be "tt".

The second reason for his popularity is his complete spontaneity with the guitar.
It is a mistake, however, to imagine that Sandburg uses the guitar as a prop.
He is no dextrous-fingered college boy but rather a dedicated, humble, and bashful apostle of this instrument.
At age seventy-four, he became what he shyly terms a "pupil" of Andres Segovia, the great guitarist of the Western world.

It is not easy to become Segovia's pupil.
One needs high talent.
Segovia has written about Carl:

"His fingers labor heavily on the strings and he asked for my help in disciplining them.
I found that this precocious, grown-up boy of 74 deserved to be taught.
There has long existed a brotherly affection between us, thus I accepted him as my pupil.
Just as in the case of every prodigy child, we must watch for the efficacy of my teaching to show up in the future -- if he should master all the strenuous exercises I inflicted on him.

To play the guitar as he aspires will devour his three-fold energy as a historian, a poet and a singer.
One cause of Schopenhauer's pessimism was the fact that he failed to learn the guitar.
I am certain that Carl Sandburg will not fall into the same sad philosophy.
The heart of this great poet constantly bubbles forth a generous joy of life -- with or without the guitar".

The public's identification of Carl Sandburg and the guitar is no happenstance.
Nor does Carl reject this identity.

He is proud of having Segovia for a friend and dedicated a poem to him titled "The Guitar".

Carl says it is the greatest poem ever written to the guitar because he has never heard of any other poem to that subtle instrument.
"A portable companion always ready to go where you go -- a small friend weighing less than a freshborn infant -- to be shared with few or many -- just two of you in sweet meditation".

The New York Herald Tribune's photographer, Ira Rosenberg, tells an anecdote about the time he wanted to take a picture of Carl playing a guitar.
Carl hadn't brought his along.
Mr. Rosenberg suggested that they go out and find one.

"Preferably", said Carl, "one battered and worn, such as might be found in a pawnshop".

They went to the pawnshop of Joseph Miller of 1162 Sixth Avenue.

"Mr. Miller was in the shop", the Herald Tribune story related, "but was reluctant to have anybody's picture taken inside, because his business was too 'confidential' for pictures.

"But after introductions he asked: 'Carl Sandburg?
Well you can pose inside'.

"He wanted Mr. Sandburg to pose with one of the guitars he had displayed behind glass in the center of his shop, but the poet eyed this somewhat distastefully.
'Kalamazoo guitars', he said, 'used by radio hillbilly singers'.

"He chose one from Mr. Miller's window, a plain guitar with no fancy polish.
While the picture was taken, Mr. Miller's disposition to be generous to Mr. Sandburg increased to the point where he advised, 'I won't even charge you the one dollar rental fee'".

A knowledgeable celebrity
When someone in the audience rose and asked how does it feel to be a celebrity, Carl said, "A celebrity is a fellow who eats celery with celerity".

This has always been Carl's attitude.
Lloyd Lewis wrote that when he first knew Carl in 1916, Sandburg was making $27.50 a week writing features for the Day Book and eating sparse luncheons in one-arm restaurants.
He walked home at night for two miles beyond the end of a suburban trolley.

When fame came it changed Sandburg only slightly.
Lewis remembered another newspaperman asking, "Carl, have your ideas changed any since you got all these comforts"?

Carl thought the question over slowly and answered: "I know a starving man who is fed never remembers all the pangs of his starvation, I know that".

That was all he said, Lewis reports.
That was all he had to say.

In answer to a New York Times query on what is fame ("Thoughts On Fame", October 23, 1960), Carl said: "Fame is a figment of a pigment.
It comes and goes.
It changes with every generation.
There never were two fames alike.
One fame is precious and luminous;
another is a bubble of a bauble".

"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain"?
The impression you get from Carl Sandburg's home is one of laughter and happiness;
and the laughter and the happiness are even more pronounced when no company is present.

Carl has been married to Paula for fifty-three years, and he has not made a single major decision without careful consideration and thorough discussion with his wife.
Through all these years, Mrs. Sandburg has pointedly avoided the limelight.
She has shared her husband's greatness, but only within the confines of their home;
it is a dedication which began the moment she met Carl.

Mrs. Sandburg received a Phi Beta Kappa key from the University of Chicago and she was busy writing and teaching when she met Sandburg.
"You are the 'Peoples' Poet'" was her appraisal in 1908, and she stopped teaching and writing to devote herself to the fulfillment of her husband's career.

She has rarely been photographed with him and, except for Carl's seventy-fifth anniversary celebration in Chicago in 1953, she has not attended the dozens of banquets, functions, public appearances, and dinners honoring him -- all of this upon her insistence.
Even now I will not intrude upon her except to state a few bare facts.

The only way to describe Paula Sandburg is to say she is beautiful in a Grecian sense.
Her clothes, her hair, everything about her is both graceful and simple.
She has small, broad, capable hands and an enormous energy.

She is not only a trained mathematician and Classicist, but a good architect.
She designed and supervised the building of the Harbert, Michigan, house, most of which was constructed by one local carpenter who carried the heavy beams singly upon his shoulder.
As the Sandburg goat herd increased, she also designed the barn alterations to accommodate them.
When erosion threatened the foundation of their home in Harbert, Paula Sandburg planted grapevines and arranged the snow fences which helped hold the sands away.

She was born Lilian Steichen, her parents immigrants from Luxemburg.
Her mother called her Paus'l, a Luxemburg endearment meaning "pussycat".
Some of the children of the family could not pronounce this name and called her Paula, a soubriquet Carl liked so much she has been Paula ever since.

But neither was Lilian her baptismal name.
Her parents, pious Roman Catholics, christened her Mary Anne Elizabeth Magdalene Steichen.
"My mother read a book right after I was born and there was a Lilian in the book she loved and I became Lilian -- and eventually I became Paula".

Lilian Steichen was an exceptional student.
This family of Luxemburg immigrants, in fact, produced two exceptional children.
Paula's older brother is Edward Steichen, a talented artist and, for the past half-century, one of the world's eminent photographers.
(Two years ago the photography editor of Vogue Magazine titled his article about Steichen, "The World's Greatest Photographer".
)

By the time Lilian had been graduated from public school, her parents were doing quite well.
Her mother was a good manager and established a millinery business in Milwaukee.
But her father was not enthusiastic about sending young Paula to high school.
"This is no place for a young girl", he said.
The parents compromised, however, on a convent school and Paula went to Ursuline Academy in London, Ontario.

She was pious, too, once kneeling through the night from Holy Thursday to Good Friday, despite the protest of the nuns that this was too much for a young girl.
She knelt out of reverence for having read the Meditations of St. Augustine.

She read everything else she could get her hands on, including an article (she thinks it was in the Atlantic Monthly) by Mark Twain on "White Slavery".
Paula was saddened about what was happening to little girls and vowed to kneel no more in Chapel.
She had come to a decision.
If there was ever a thought in her mind she might devote her life to religion, it was now dispelled.
"I felt that I must devote myself to the 'outside' world".

She passed the entrance examinations to the University of Illinois, but during the year at Urbana felt more important events transpired at the University of Chicago.

"And besides, Thorstein Veblen was one of the Chicago professors".

At the University of Chicago she studied Whitman and Shelley, and became a Socialist.
Socialist leaders in Milwaukee recognized her worth, not only because of her dedication but because of her fluency in German, French, and Luxemburg.
She once gave a German recitation before a convention of German-language teachers in Milwaukee.

Carl and Paula met in Milwaukee in 1907 during Paula's Christmas holiday visit to her parents.
Carl was still Charles A. Sandburg.
He "legitimized" Paula for Lilian Steichen, and it was Paula who insisted on Carl for Charles.

Victor Berger, the panjandrum of Wisconsin Socialism and member of Congress, had asked Paula Steichen to translate some of his German editorials into English.
Carl, who was stationed in Appleton, Wisconsin, organizing for the Social Democrats, was in Berger's office and made it his business to escort Paula to the streetcar.
She left the next day for her teaching job at Princeton, Illinois.
(After graduation from the University of Chicago, Paula taught for two years in the normal school at Valley City, North Dakota, then two years at Princeton (Illinois) Township High School.
) By the time the streetcar pulled away, he had fallen in love with Paula.

A letter awaited her at Princeton.
Paula says that even though Carl's letters usually began, "Dear Miss Steichen", there was an understanding from the beginning that they would become husband and wife.

Paula generously lent me one of Carl's love letters, dated February 21, 1908, Hotel Athearn, Oshkosh, Wisconsin:

"Dear Miss Steichen: It is a very good letter you send me -- softens the intensity of this guerilla warfare I am carrying on up here.
Never until in this work of S-D organization have I realized and felt the attitude and experience of a Teacher.