February 20, 1938-
     Last night Mr. Balk called & gave me the address of the 2nd hand store, & then asked me to bring Arthur to see his shop today. So this afternoon we started out much to Arthur’s great happiness.
Mr. Balk was watching for us, and took us at once to his workshop. Without any preliminaries, he gave Arthur a demonstration on the jig-saw, cutting Arthur’s initial, and then letting Arthur cut one himself. Following this he ran the buzz-saw a little, cutting off fine slivers of wood. Then we stood around & talked awhile. I had a chance to look around the place. It was literally crammed with things; walls, shelves, cases were loaded down with every sort of object - like the accumulation of years of fungus growths on dead trees - hundreds of tools, lots of iron, parts of things, radios, a human skull with dear horns growing out of it, a stuffed eagle, and additional eagles claws, a Japanese devil mask, parts of stained glass, (genuinely old - about 300 to 400 years old) a deer’s head, prints - to Arthur it must have been a regular gold mine; but to me, it was pathetic - it bespoke the amateur who cannot choose rightly or forebear choosing, but must accumulate thru the years, everything he saw.
After a short session here, he took us into the house. Here it was a repetition of the workshop only in a grander scale. It really is beyond me to describe. Every room was so crammed that there was scarcely room to walk; walls were covered. All manner of furniture that Balk had carved himself -