[ THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, KANSAS CITY.][397]

On the non-material side the city has made a progress even more remarkable. It is not devoted entirely to money-getting. The humanities have been remembered. There are some thirty-four hospitals, asylums, and benevolent homes. It has eight hospitals proper for the reception of the sick, disabled, and diseased, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company maintaining one. There are five children's homes, and one industrial home. There are three homes for the aged, one of which is for colored people entirely. There is one convent and an institution each for the Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of Mercy, besides others of lesser importance. In some cases the buildings may not be pretentious, but they are all ample in size, and in many instances would not discredit the cities of the largest population. The exceptional intelligence of the people is proved by other unmistakable signs. Strong, clean newspapers, beautiful opera houses, first-class hotels, hundreds of churches, modern schools, great libraries, charming clubs, beautiful parks and streets, fine hospitals, fine public buildings, admirable public utilities, and above all an enormous proportion of beautiful homes,—these are some of the signs that tell of the fruition of the highest hopes of the hardy pioneers who first gave battle to savagery and the wilderness at this point.

That the city has a much greater growth before it is the opinion of all who are familiar with the conditions there. The vast agricultural, mineral, and manufacturing region surrounding it and directly tributary to it for a thousand miles in every direction is sure to push it steadily forward among American cities until it ranks at last with Boston, Baltimore, and St. Louis.

OMAHA
THE TRANSCONTINENTAL GATEWAY

By VICTOR ROSEWATER

NOW a city of 100,000 population, with prosperous suburbs that make it the business centre for 175,000 people, Omaha is the outgrowth of the Nebraska & Council Bluffs Ferry Company. This company was organized under the incorporation laws of Iowa, in 1853, to carry on the lucrative ferriage traffic for transcontinental pilgrims in quest of the gold-fields of California that had been begun two years previously by a halted gold-seeker, Brown by name, who saw more gold in paddling passengers across the murky Missouri than in washing the yellow sands near Sutter's mill.