Four volumes of Barber stacked on the large table prompt the librarian to suspect that many, many folders of maps will be lugged from the cabinets beyond the corner around which no scholar may ever pass. Then Sanborn Company maps, immense, multi-colored sheets created for the use of fire insurance firms intrigued by the material, condition, and surroundings of industrial buildings. And therein lies the clue. Sanborn Company inspectors focused on brick walls, sprinkler systems, and the proximity of fireworks plants to lumberyards, but now and then they scrutinized trees. Trees are, after all, what is not present in the meticulously detailed, seemingly accurate Barber views of villages.
Barber renders trees in cities and trees in towns, but much less often in villages.
At Baker Library even the students wear suits. Two future financiers listen momentarily to the historian interrogating the librarian about fire insurance firms, but decide nothing profitable can come of it. Down, down, down into stacks so cramped for headroom that two might fit easily into the towering basement of Cabot. The distinguished figure in the foreground might be John Warner Barber himself, for nothing in the topographer's prose description of Conway suggests that the village supported anyone accustomed to sartoreal splendor, much less a fire-extinguishing engine. Upstairs to the top floor for material in the Kress Collection, and there, the policies.