146 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



and art collections of the British Museum, but 

 dares to confess that he always enters this famil- 

 iar home building with a feeling of reverence. 

 Some years ago in the little building along the 

 Lexington Road where so many interesting relics 

 of Concord were gathered, the curator had placed 

 here and there on the walls printed placards read- 

 ing: ^'Voices of the Past that Whisper." Here 

 also, amid the energetic activities of today and 

 large-minded plans for the future, the same voices 

 reach us. 



Within a year or two a Harvard professor 

 speaking at the University of California named 

 Iowa as a state conspicuous for its lack of literary 

 production. This seems to us one of those care- 

 less statements the westerner so often hears from 

 the easterner; but be that as it may, we have at 

 least not been entirely negligent in collecting or 

 reading the books others have written. Stephen 

 Tabor, an Iowa citizen who died in 1883, is said to 

 have left a private library of six thousand vol- 

 umes. According to Gue, ^' every book had been 

 read before being placed upon the shelves." In 

 1848 the library of the state contained some sixteen 

 hundred volumes, about one-third of them being 

 law books. The state collections now contain some 

 one hundred and forty thousand volumes. Within 

 this building, also, are collections of books by Iowa 

 authors indicating at least ''Literary Beginnings 



