The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-28
Walt Mason in the Kansas City Time

"
 tifpl home,r remarked the as ing and was kept busy expressing my admiration. No wonder Dickery is proud | of it.
 "Ie has his home on exhibition right along" said the village patriarch. "lt's a beautiful place, as you say, but II
 about as homelike as Carnegie library.
 It takes more than lot of padded fur niture and some bronze and irons to make a home.
 "Dickery invited me to spend an even ing with him about a hundred times be- fore I yielded. I knew that his oo1ect
 was to overwhelm me with, the majesty of his box stall and not to give me
 good time. Finally I went out of curl osity, and I don't believe I ever put la
 a more uncomfortable evening. The floors were all greased or waxed so that they were as slippery as an icy sidewalk ana nobody had thrown ashes on them
 stepped on rug in the hall and it slid
 out from under me and I came down with
 such a sickening thud that a lot of crock
 cry in the kitchen was broken. If there is
 anything more idiotic than slippery floors I'd like to know what it is People who insist upon having them should at least furnish their guests with spiked shoes. eve went into the sitting room or drawing room, or whatever you call 1t. | it's the room with fireplace about the size of the south end of a livery stable. l .Dickery explained that he always did
 love fireplace, 1t gave such a cozy,
 hon,elike appearance. Some wood was burning in the fireplace and we sat down l in the ruddy glow and coughed and strangled and tried out several new kinds of apoplexy, for the smoke was always blowing into our faces and the room smelled like forest fire. never vet saw a fireplace as satisfactory as a good old sheetiron stove with damper to regulate the draft. and that one of Dickery's nearly killed me. I felt like | smoked ham when I got away from there.
 While we talked Mrs. Dickery how cred around and she seemed to be in con
 stant fear that I would break or injure something. I was in a rocking chair and
 I soon had hints that the chair wasn't to | be rocked violently. A gentle swayiug | motion was all it would stand. When I am at home I seat myself in an old
 wooden rocker that I bought for s2 about ] 30 years ago. I usually whittle it as I rock, and my initials are carved all over it. There's solid comfort in such a chair
 as that, but the Dickery chair was so
 massive and uncomfortable that I felt l like a man who is waiting electrocution. At home I usually place my feet on l the center table, but I saw at glance that FMS. Dickery was opposed to any 1 thing of that sort, so I had to Keep my l feet on the floor. I did try to rest them
 on the bars of the grate once, but Dickery had a spasm, saying that the bars were genuine antique bronze and easily de- faced. There didn't seem to be good place for a mans feet in all that house.
 hold.
 .rbev showed me the library. and it's beautiful library. There are bookcases
 to burn and the shelves are filed with handsome volumes arranged according to color and size, and I don't believe any
 hodv ever read one of them. If man
 sat down in that gorgeous room and tried
 to read one of those noble volumes he'd
 feel like a porch climber. My own H.
 brary is scattered all over the house.
 There are books on the kitchen table and on the cottage organ; there are uplifting
 works on the stairway and on the lounge. When I want certain book I have to hunt all over the house for it, hut when l find it I read 1t in comfort. I
 have no apartment set apart for reading. Sometimes I pursue my literary re-
 searches on the front porch and some-
 times in the barn. I don't believe could get any pleasure or satisfaction from
 reading a book in room that seems a cross between a cathedral and a .morgue.
 "Dickery has several fine boys and girls