Interviewer: “Do you think you will have achieved your dream of a department store when the new addition is finished?” [The interviewer refers to the large addition to the Houghton & Dutton store that was made in 1913.]

“No, I don’t think I ever could realize my whole dream of a department store. You see, my dream keeps growing, and I am sure it will keep growing as long as I have health and strength. Yet we have accomplished a great deal. When I think of that old Pavilion Building on Tremont street and look at this building today, running up Beacon street from Tremont to Somerset street, around Somerset street and back into Pemberton square and down Tremont street – well it makes me think we have done pretty well; but there is more to be done, and it isn’t all in the building line either.”

That shows spirit, and nerve, and enterprise, when you hear a man 82 years old talk like that.

“I feel,” said he, “that we have kept pace with the growth of the city in our business and with the development of our civilization. Those things won’t stop, you know, and the successful department store of the future must keep pace with the growth and development of the city, which means in this case practically the whole of New England, for our trade extends all over New England.”

It might be supposed from all this that B. F. Dutton is the kind of man who thinks of nothing but business. Far from it. He is a firm believer in recreation of a healthy kind. He had always been famous as a sportsman and a fisherman, and he used to get around the golf links in pretty lively style. He is a crack shot and has always been a great lover of horses. In the days before the automobile came into vogue Mr. Dutton was celebrated for his stable of horses, and he has been up against the best of them on the old Mill dam, when sleighing behind a fast trotter was considered the name of Winter sport. And he has always been a great reader and a lover of good music. He has the happy faculty of being able to throw off the cares of business when he turns to recreation of any kind.  And he has tried to impress the importance of being able to do just this thing on his “boys” – on Harry Dutton, on George C. Dutton and on Alexander McGregor.

“Any man will grow stale and lose his sense of perspective if he thinks of nothing but his business,” said Mr. Dutton.

And another thing that should not be overlooked. He remembers his friends, especially in their “dark days,” and he remembers a good many others in the world on whom fortune has not always smiled, but he does all this sort of thing in his own way and without any flourish of trumpets. He knows how to observe silence on certain things that he cherished in his own heart.

One thing is certain, however, Boston has been enriched through the genius of B. F. Dutton and the enterprise of his “boys,” and from what has been said, it is not difficult to see that his influence has not been confined to his own house: it has extended and ramified in many silent ways into other business houses all over the country. And few will doubt that the dream of a department store which he planned at Hillsboro, N.H., more than 50 years ago has been very largely realized on the corner of Tremont street and Beacon street in Boston, Mass. For this completed store will be one of the handsomest, most commodious and most efficient in the country.