MILLIONAIRE’S MOTHER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18954, 30 August 1923, Page 2

MILLIONAIRE’S MOTHER.

HENRY FORD’S TRIBUTE. RESTORATION OF OLD HOME. WASHING-TUB DAYS RECALLED. As a tribute to his mother, Henry lord, the multi-millionaire, has restored the home she loved. It stands to-day exactly as it was in 1876. This has cost some effort. Mr Ford remembered the name and model number of the stove which stood in the sitting room of his old home, and after 18 months of search found its duplicate. It was in a doctor’s house, and Ford gave him 25 dollars tor it, dismantling it himself and stowing it up in his car. Even the carpet on the parlour floor, covered with a rose pattern, he wanted to see again, and, after seeking for months, a woman near Rochester, New York, was able to find one lor him. Now he has a complete duplicate of his old home, with all the little knick-knacks treasured there—--io candlesticks, the old-fashioned copper vessel, his grandfather’s clay pipe. The room where he was born is just the same, as it was. The stove, the bureau, tne baby’s crib, and clock on the mantelpiece are just as his mother left them. The bed is the same. It is always kept made up with his mother’s counterpane on it, and a pair of old-fashioned embroidered slippers side by side on fb© floor beneath it. Over an archway leading into the parlour is a sampler in a thin black frame. VVorked in red thread is the motto, ‘■There is no place like home.” The dishes in the kitchen cabinet and the old pump by the kitchen sink are preserved, recalling the days to the millionaire when he had to fill the boiler and tub for the weekly washing and rinsing. *T have tried to live my life as my mother would have wished,’’ ho says, in me American Magazine. “I believe I have done so far as I could just*what she hoped for me. She taught me as a boy that service is the highest duty in this world. I believed her then, and I believe her now. I have tried to follow her teaching.’’ Mr Ford was born on a small farm near Dearborn, Michigan, and in the restored house the rooms are dusted every morning, a fire is kept on the hearth, and all just as his mother used to keep it..