Carl Sandburg
Photograph
c 1905

At 27, Sandburg lived just outside of Chicago in a one-dollar-per-week room with no heat. He took cold sponge baths with water that had frozen in a pitcher overnight; cooked eggs over his sterno stove for breakfast, and then with an apple or an orange was on his way.

Sandburg submitted his poems and prose to magazines and sold stereographs. It took ten years before he began making decent money with his writing. He had faith he would prevail as noted in a letter to his college professor and mentor Phillip G. Wright, "There is a place for me somewhere, where I can write and speak much as I can think, and make it pay for my living and some besides. Just where this place is I have small idea now, but I am going to find it..."
Paper. L 13.0, W 9.0 cm
Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, CARL 30461