The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1935-12-06
Squaring
The Circle
With
McCREADY HUSTON
McCREADY HUSTON

CANDBURG dropped in to see the
~ boss man and happened to
blunder into the office and the boss
man asked me if I would sit down
and visit a spell. The trouble with
Carl is that you can't get hold of
him long enough to have real visit
He had been here talking to the
teachers of English and was on his
way to De PAW and spoke vaguely
about being around this way again
and we would get together.
Before I am gathered to my
fathers I have to play a round of
golf with Carl. A few years ago he
challenged me to a match when he
was going around in about a
hundred and forty strokes and was
just a bit better. But he wanted
the match to take place on his home
lot, near Harbart, Mich, where he
was finally settled. I held out for
neutral territory and so the colossal
contest has never come off.
Probably the gentlest man of let
tiers. And I mean letters. But to
understand Carl Sandburg you have
to know his wife, who is a. sister
of the great photographer, Steichen.
She said to Carl, some years ago,
Let's leave this hurly-burly of Chi
cago and go out on the Lake Michi-
gan dunes and build us house."
Well, you can imagine Carl building
house or even taking title to
piece of ground. He was too much
absorbed in his work on Abraham
Lincoln. But he consented, which
was the best thing he. ever did; and
Mrs. Sandburg provided him and
herself and the children with rest
ing place overlooking the lake.
ME region is near enough to
- Chicago for people to have sum-
mer homes there, and as Carl is
away most of the time lecturing and
playing his guitar, Mrs. Sandburg
said to herself, I'D better build a
few cottages around here and sell
them to the big butter and-egg men
who want to get their families out
of Chicago in the summer" So she
did.
Carl has sort of shanty out be-
hind their own house to which he
can retire and WOO the gentle muse.
I have always thought he was one
of the best muse wooers extant
He is possessed of a tremendous
pity for the common folk, growing,
no doubt, out of his own early ex-
periences. 1t is something like that
of Sherwood Anderson, and if Sand
burg had been a novelist instead of
a poet and a historian we probably
would have had something more
lasting than Dresser.
I thought when Carl was in town
this week his manager had been
working on him. His gray forelock
did not fall nearly so far down his
face and he was groomed to the
point that makes even a newspaper
man nervous. I trust that they are
not thinking of making Carl turn
out in a shadbelly coat, striped
trousers and spats.
no you recall that when THE
- Prairie Years" came out about
the same time as Beveridge's life of
Lincoln, people used to get together
before the freside and argue as to
which was the better biography? I
recall an Indiana woman wit who
used to call these profound Sunday
evening meetings Twilight Sleeps"
Both men at the time were my
dear friends and I regretted that
any argument should come up. For
each of these writer's approached
Lincoln from different angle.
You have to give Beveridge credit.
He was thorough. He sale once that
he rewrote chapter of his Lincoln
seventeen times and then submitted
it to some of the ablest historians
in the universities of America He
was not more thorough than Carl.
What I am saying is that the two
works must be judged separately,
according to the temperament of
the author.