1887.....Appropriation from general fund for Grant Memorial Hall. 15,000.00 Total income from all sources. $930,024,98 CURIOSITIES. The first bill for hard coal was $24 per ton, and for soft coal $12.50; March 2, 1871, the expense bill for coal having reached $656.19, the fires in the furnaces were ordered put out. Regularly for the first three years a visiting committee composed of educators from the schools of the state, mainly principals of the small high schools, was appointed to inspect the workings of the University and report the results of their observations to the regents. At present the process is reversed, and those schools that wish to get on the University's accredited list must submit to an inspection by some member of its faculty. One of these reports is extant, and judging from its tone, one might conclude that perfection had been reached. An order was passed at one.time, still in force as far as the records show, providing that diploma fees should be invested in books; and that the name of the graduate should be entered on the tag, together with the date of his graduation, when the fee was paid, and other interesting and valuable information of a like nature. The following, taken from an early catalogue, needs no comment: "Resolved that it shall be required of all students graduating in the agricultural course, that they shall have a practical acquaintance with agriculture." Again, "labor on the farm is designed to be educational in its nature. But perhaps this announcement made in 1877 caps the climax: "At the farm the students can find a pleasant home, far enough from the city to be out of the way of its temptations to idleness and worse." At one time the students deficient in English had a hard time, as the following resolution shows: "Resolved that students deficient in English shall be required by the faculty to write an essay every week till they have made up said deficiency." The very A few very modest announcements were made from time to time, as these few quotations prove: "The completeness and conveniences of the laboratory equaled any in the country." At the very moment one room housed it all. At a later time: "the apparatus was equal to any in the country;" in quality, perhaps, was meant. next catalogue announced that large additions" had been made in apparatus, an announcement that leads one to wonder how it compared with Harvard or Columbia, after large additions had been made to an equipment already equal to the best. ASSOCIATIONAL SERMON. BY REV. WILLARD SCOTT. [Preached before the General Association at Beatrice, Oct. 28, 1885.] TEXT--PSALM XC; 16, 17. Congregationalism began in Nebraska in 1855. In the fall of that year the Rev. Reuben Gaylord, pastor of the Congregational church of Danville, Iowa, thirteen miles inland from Burlington, took his vacation westward as far as the Missouri valley. Business directed him to Council Bluffs; curiosity, and the desire to learn something of the death in Omaha of a nephew, led him over the river. The day was Saturday, when preparations for the Sabbath are completed, or, as in this instance, made, and he was asked to remain and preach, which he did. In the audience was "Governor" O. D. Richardson, a prominent Congregationalist, and subsequently one of the charter members of the Omaha church, who urged the claims of the field upon him and invited him to remove hither. That invitation, as he set out on his journey homeward, followed him. He had been accustomed to the frontier and loved it. He says; "Before entering the ministry, in the providence of God, I was made acquainted with the West to some extent." That was in Illinois, previous to 1838. In that year he crossed the Mississippi into Iowa, the second Congregationalist in that state, and there wrought for seventeen years before his visit to Omaha. That visit decided him to remove once more. Accordingly, having conferred with his family and his brethren in the ministry, he resigned his pastorate in Danville, and with the hearty endorsement of his asso`ciates, sent on his application to the secretaries in New York for commission in his newly chosen field, and, without waiting for either an answer or instructions, set out. He says: "So clear was the call of God to go forward, we left the eastern part of Iowa for a journey across the state, not as now in the easy and comfortable car, but in a carriage with small children, encountering storms, crossing swollen streams, without bridges, with steep and icy banks, and finally meeting winter in its sternest aspects." The journey was for three weeks, and ended on Christmas day, 1855, when he and his crossed the Missouri river on the ice and housed themselves in an unfinished dwelling on Capitol avenue. A part of his Christmas welcome was a letter found awaiting him from the Rev. Milton Badger, D. D., senior secretary of the Home Missionary Society, granting his application, and adding, "Blow the Gospel Trumpet so loud that all the land can hear." Consider, for a moment, the significance of that pioneer history. He was made familiar with the West in his early manhood while tutor for two years in Illinois College, so that, when he was prepared to enter upon ministerial duties, he was inclined toward it. God had prepared him through secular circumstances for this choice of fields. Weariness in his work made a vacation necessary. Business directed it westward. Curiosity, and the death in Omaha of a relative, led him over a great river. It happened on a Saturday and he was asked to preach. A prominent Congregationalist heard him and was moved to invite him westward. His second call, like his first, was forerun by circumstances. When it came it was not equivocal. "So clear was the call of God to go forward, we left." He could say, almost as truly as Paul, "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." vidette in saddle, ready at a moment's notice. He was a What was the result? A wonderful history by an average man. Second into Iowa, he was first into Nebraska. His life divided itself, as Robert Collyer said of his own, "into two sections of striking on long lines," seventeen years Iowan and twenty-four years Nebraskan. He was one of three to organize the General Association of Iowa in 1840, and one of three to organize the General Association of Nebraska in 1857. He was one of the founders and for ten years a trustee of Iowa College, and one of the founders and for many years a trustee of Nebraska University at Fontenelle. He was moderator of the General Association of Iowa in 1853, and moderator of the General Association of Nebraska in 1860, 1862 and 1864. We say that middle aged trees and men do not transplant easily. But he transplanted easily and firmly at forty-three. "I came in perfect health," he says, "full of enthusiasm to do the work of Him that sent me." This same vigor characterized him to the end. When he ceased, it was as he had often wished, with the "harness on." His last sermon, on the Sunday before his departure, was from the scripture, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," and the sermon in preparation, when he was suddenly called, was from this, "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne." He died in the midst, and in the full spirit, of the week of prayer, January 10th, 1880. "Forwards! Forwards! Forwards!" was his motto, "Still renewing, bravely hewing, On arriving that December day he found four clergymen in the state; a Presbyterian at Nebraska City, another at Bellevue, and in Omaha a Methodist and a Baptist, preaching alternately in the council chamber of the old state house on Ninth street. They occupied the forenoon and evening. He took what was left, the afternoon. A Congregational society was formed during the winter, and on May 4th, a church of nine members, Mr. Gaylord, his wife, and daughter, being three of them. A church building was begun, and by October was so far completed that the basement could be used for services, when six were added to the membership, and a denominational Sunday school was organized. Work on the building was continued until the following August (1857), when on the 9th, "the carpenter work, the painting and graining of the seats was done, and the spire crowned with ball, vane, and rod, and all was in readiness," at a cost of $4,500. The dedicatory sermon was preached by Mr. Gaylord from Psalm xe; 16, 17: "Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it." Such privation, toil, and self denial went into that building as have since gone into many another in this state, and, as in too many |