Dumb Institute under way, at a cost of $14,495, and during the past two years the number in attendance was fifty-three.

This important branch of our educational system [Normal School] seems to be in excellent condition. The benefits of the school are already felt in the State and the results that may be safely anticipated in the future fully justify its maintenance. The total enrollment of students for the year 1876 was two hundred sixty-eight, and the average attendance per term was one hundred and forty-two. For the last term of the year the enrollment was one hundred and ninety-six. The average cost of the school per term as shown by the report of the principal, is $3,686.

The working of this benevolent institution [Hospital for Insane] for two years prior to November, 1876, had exhausted an appropriation of $60,746, of which amount $26,962 had been charged to counties having patients in the hospital. During two preceding years one hundred sixty-four patients had been under treatment. Fifty were reported as recovered; nine as improved; unimproved, six; escaped, one; died, five; and ninety-three remaining.

The expense per week for board and clothing of patients and board of officers was for 1876 $2.14.

In the matter of the penitentiary convicts the governor sought for practical reforms and benevolent results, and reported a change of wardens in the interest of less severity and better personal influence. His sensible and humane ideas can be best expressed in his own words.

The younger class of criminals have been separated from the more vicious and hardened and night schools during the winter have been established with excellent results. These reforms, in connection with the good time act giving prisoners an opportunity to shorten their terms of sentence by good conduct, have been productive of much good. There is sufficient room in the west wing of the building for a reform school, which could be conducted by the same officers, and put in operation at small expense. This would completely separate the younger criminals from the older, and furnish better opportunities for educating and reforming them. The penitentiary being completed some branch of industry should be established at the prison for the purpose of utilizing convict labor. It is absolutely essential to the good government of the prison that the inmates be kept at hard labor for a certain number of hours each day.

Early in his administration it became necessary to organize military companies on the western frontier of the State, and procure from the general government arms and ammunition. In accomplishing this he gave bond in the sum of $18,000, for the return of the guns when demanded. Another similar emergency arose in the case of the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the legis lature having failed to make an appropriation. The governor assumed the responsibility of borrowing of banks a sufficient. amount to enable the State to obtain a creditable showing and receive a premium on soil and apples.

The message gave the population of the State in the spring of 1876 as being 257,749. Having submitted facts and opinions on the question of usury, of banks and bankers, a proper disposition of the vast land endowment of the State, and amendment of laws, and submitted an elaborate statement of the necessity of a geological survey, with official reports of state officers, he concluded with a hearty promise of legislative co-operation.

His last official conimunication was made to the legislature of 1879, after four years of administration. From a glowing recapitulation of past progress, he found additional sources of congratulation in the condition of the finances, which showed that the total receipt for the two years ending November, 1878, was $1,908,337 and that the assessed value of taxable property, 1878, was $74,389,535, being an increase of $3,077,957, over the previous year, and that the condition of the common schools, of the normal school and state university had exceeded the most sanguine expectations, and the conditions of the charitable institutions, "devoted to the care and education of our children of sorrow," were flourishing.

These sources of commendation were supplemented by valuable recommendations. First, that provision should be made for leasing the salt springs and "utilizing the lands donated for their development;" and that an agricultural bureau of reports and statistics should be established for distribution, such as to induce immigration; that fish culture should receive encouraging legislation; that the Indian control should be given over to the war department; and the laws receive a careful revision.

His plea for a reform school for juvenile offenders was hearty and intelligent, containing references to the experiences of other states, and saying:

In recommending the establishment of an institution of this kind in the State, I do so believing that charity for our wayward youth invokes it and the full performance of a righteous duty to humanity demands it.

I have an abiding faith in Nebraska's future. Indeed, who can not have, when we compute the value of the increasing flocks that dot her vast domain, and the productive wealth of her million acres once subdued and yielding golden harvests to enrich the husbandman.

With a sound and wholesome code of laws for its corner stone, we may build up here a commonwealth in this center of the continent that shall swell the high wave of commerce surging between the mines of the West and the marts of the East, and, maturing as it advances in age, it shall stand prominent in the grand galaxy of states.

I sincerely trust that your deliberations may be conducted in harmony and attended with those beneficial results so confidently anticipated by your constituents. Το those officers with whom I have been associated in the conduct of public affairs, I extend my warmest thanks for their uniform kindness and courtesy.

And now, in relinquishing the high trust committed to my charge four years ago, I desire to make my grateful acknowledgments to a most generous and indulgent people; and upon them, yourself, and the State, I invoke the continued favor of Almighty God.

GOVERNOR ALBINUS NANCE.

1879-1883.

In the career of Albinus Nance we have a splendid illustration of the energy and pluck of Young America. He was born in March, 1848, at Lafayette, Stark County, Illinois. At the age of sixteen years we find him a soldier in the civil war. He passed through the war with only slight wounds, and was mustered out with his regiment. Next we find him in civil life, a student at Knox College, at Galesburg, Illinois, where the foundation for his professional life was established and where he was admitted to the bar in 1870, in the twenty-second year of his age.

If his better genius should not fail him, all his past successes indicated early achievements in the future. Soon thereafter he graduated as a pre-emptor and farmer, and became a representative in the Nebraska legislature; was chairman of the state delegation in the Republican National Convention at Cincinnatti in 1876; and in the same year again elected to the legis lature and made speaker of the house of representatives, while still under thirty years of age. With the dawn of 1883, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, he had added to his other triumphs and services, four years in the gubernatorial chair of his adopted state, and was retiring to private life respected for manly virtues and official integrity.

The inaugural address of Governor Nance gave the population of the State in 1881 as over 400,000, with not more than onetenth of its area under cultivation, and only about one-third of the State populated.

The Great American Desert had receded as settlement advanced, and he predicted that soon, as an agricultural state, Nebraska would have no superior, with a large amount of land devoted to grazing in the western part. The time was most auspicious, as good crops had been secured for several years and financially the people were exceptionally prosperous. He urged

the claims of agriculture and horticulture, of equitable laws as to interest and capital, and placed the moral and intellectual culture and protection of the people on an even higher plane than exemption from Indian and monopolistic domination. He made it a source of congratulation that a high standard of instruction had been attained in the schools, with an endowment of near $20,000,000. Four years thereafter, at the expiration of his second term of two years each, his statement of progress was very cheering.

On the third of January, 1883, Governor Nance delivered his last message to the legislature, with the following introduction:

Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives: Legislative authority has been conferred upon you at an auspicious period in the history of the State. Since the last regular session of the legislature there has been a marked degree of prosperity in every department of industry, and our growth in population and wealth has been a marvelous event, even to those who had indulged the most sanguine anticipations in contemplating the possibilities of the future. A brief review of our state history may be profitably considered in this connection. At the date of admission into the Union in 1867, the population of Nebraska was estimated at 70,000, and the aggregate value of taxable property of the State was $20,115,252. The population at the present time, as estimated on the basis of a moderate increase over the census of 1880, is not less than 600,000. The total assessed value of property as shown by the grand assessment roll of 1882, on file in the office of the state auditor is $98,537,475.

The sparse settlements in 1867 were remote from centers of trade and railroad connection, and were deprived of most of the comforts of life. The people of Nebraska are now brought into close relations with the commercial and social world, and it is a gratifying fact that every organized county in the State, except eight, has railroad facilities. Two principal agencies have accomplished this transportation. The homesteaders, under the liberal policy of the general government, accepting a heritage which in itself was a valuable legacy, have toiled from year to year with untiring energy and splendid success in improving the lands thus secured. The capitalists of this and other countries having a degree of faith in our future which has been more than justified by results, pushed the work of railroad ex