I was in the office of my banker, Adam, the other day when I noticed a copy of Carl Sandburg’s six-volume life of Lincoln lined up along the credenza.

People often decorate their offices and living rooms with old books, so with a wink across the desk, I asked Adam if the Sandburg series was just for show.

“I’ve always liked to read, and the Sandburg set is from my father,” Adam told me. “Sometimes, when I’m here late waiting for a client to show, I dip into Sandburg’s 'Lincoln' to pass the time.”

The thought of a young executive leaving the world of mutual funds and annuities to travel with Honest Abe from the prairies to the White House heartened me. I wondered if we all might benefit by turning away from our cluttered desks, if only for a few moments, to revisit the words and deeds of the Great Emancipator.

Abraham Lincoln: 15 favorite quotes on his birthday

With the arrival of another Presidents Day, perhaps now is as good a time as any to acknowledge our debt not only to Lincoln, but to Sandburg, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 for the concluding volumes of his Lincoln biography. Sandburg, best known as a poet, seemed an unlikely biographer of the nation’s 16th president when he started the project in the 1920s.

“There were some critics who said at the time that a poet’s pen should not meddle in history,” Sandburg’s daughter, Paula Steichen, later recalled.

The poet comes through in many of the passages from Sandburg’s "Lincoln," which resonates with hymn-like clarity. Here’s Sandburg on the death of Lincoln’s mother:

“So the woman, Nancy Hanks, died, thirty-six years old, a pioneer sacrifice, with memories of monotonous, endless everyday chores, of mystic Bible verses read over and over for their promises, and with memories of blue wistful hills and a summer when the crabapple blossoms flamed white and she carried a boy-child into the world....“

Sandburg, who died in 1967 at age 89, wrote biography with the kind of flourish that can seem quaint to modern ears, but his basic sense of how to tell a good story is a reminder that even writers who aren’t professional historians also have something to contribute to presidential biography.

His "Lincoln," though perhaps little read today, is part of a larger tradition of presidential biography started by Washington Irving, the 19th-century writer who gained fame as the author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" before turning to a mammoth life of Washington. Then, as now, Americans depended on popular writers to chronicle their commanders-in-chief – a practice that continues today in the able hands of David McCullough, Richard Reeves, and others.

Thanks to Sandburg and his successors, we can connect with the lives of our presidents on Presidents Day, and every other day of the year.

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A decade after she was snatched from the bed she was sharing with her sister, then held hostage and sexually abused for nine months, Elizabeth Smart is set to graduate college, engaged and the founder of an organization meant to help prevent crimes against children.

She also found forgiveness.

Smart, now 24, was kidnapped from her Utah home and abused by Brian Mitchell when she was 14 years old. She was rescued nine months later after being recognized on the street; her captor is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.

Smart will speak about her abduction and forgiveness March 8 at the USF Performing Arts Center, formerly known as Scottish Rite Center.

The event, hosted by the Fort Wayne Women’s Bureau and sponsored by 3Rivers Federal Credit Union, will raise money for the Women’s Bureau. Louise Jackson, CEO of the Women’s Bureau, says child abuse might be on Fort Wayne’s collective mind at this time, referencing the December murder of Aliahna Lemmon.

“That (event) may draw people to hear Elizabeth and may help people in the community heal from that terrible loss that we had,” Jackson says.

Part of Smart’s talk will focus on how she was able to get through the ordeal and the good that has come from her abduction, she said in a phone interview from her Utah home.

Through Smart’s foundation, and through the attention she has received since her kidnapping, she has spoken to thousands of people about her ordeal.

“If I hadn’t been kidnapped, if I hadn’t been through everything that I’d been through, if the media hadn’t played such a huge role in the entire case, nobody would listen to me,” Smart says. “I would just be another girl on the street.

“Since I can make a difference and people will listen to me when I speak, it’s when I realized I want to make a difference for other people. I have had this pretty horrific experience, but it can open so many doors for me that otherwise wouldn’t have been opened.

“Thank goodness it did happen to me and not somebody else, and I can go on and speak on it, and I’ll be fine. I can come home at night, and it won’t haunt me, and it won’t stop me from being happy. But somebody else, maybe not.”

Smart says although her experiences have made her more cautious, it hasn’t affected her relationships much. She points out that Mitchell is older than her dad, so she put him in a different category from men she might date.

“Knowing that I would have that opportunity to date if I wanted, knowing I could go out with boys my own age, knowing I was sort of master of my own destiny so to speak, I decided when I wanted to be in a relationship,” she says, and “I decided when I was done in a relationship. I don’t think that it stopped me from entering a relationship when I felt good about someone.”

Relationships are often affected when someone has experienced sexual abuse, says Abby Widmer, director for the Women’s Bureau’s rape awareness program.

“(Rape) affects every morsel of their body,” Widmer says. “There are things you wouldn’t think that are affected in a trauma like that. Relationships are a big one.”

Widmer points out that women who are raped will often have trust issues. Often, they will become hypervigilant, constantly checking to see whether doors and windows are locked, assuring no one is in the room with them.

In fact, Widmer calls it rare for someone to say an assault doesn’t have an effect on their relationships. She suggests that perhaps Smart has an excellent support system, and some of the people who have most trouble dealing with what has happened to them are those without a support system.

Smart says she doesn’t think about her abduction a lot and advice from her mother is part of how she has managed to move on.

“She more or less said the best punishment I can give to my captor was to be happy and to do things that I wanted to do and to live my life the way I wanted to live it,” she says.

“The perpetrator, they just walk away and don’t think about it again, and the victim, they carry that pain around with them every single day of their lives, and it becomes so incredibly difficult to function. Nobody should be living their life like that. (You have to) say, ‘No, you can’t do this to me. I’m going to do something about it. I’m taking my life back.’ That’s why I do what I do.”

Smart is a senior at Brigham Young University, where she is majoring in harp performance. She’s played the harp since she was 5.

She admits that playing the harp has nothing to do with her eventual career goals, which are to work in child advocacy – something she already does through her speaking engagements and the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. She urges those who have experienced abuse to speak up, as many who have been raped never tell anyone.

“If you think that person that abused you is still out there, there’s a good chance he’s hurting someone else,” she says. “It could stop if you come forward and talk about it.”

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