Gondring is chairman of the committee on accounts and expenditures, and a member of the committees on judiciary, finance, ways and means, municipal affairs, banks and currency, privileges and elections, and constitutional amendments and federal relations. He is one of the most arduous workers, both on the floor of the senate and in the committee room, is recognized as an authority of weight on matters of general discussion, an excellent debater, and is untiring in his labors for the best interests of his constituents and the state.

ON. LOYAL M. GRAHAM, of Stockville, Nebraska, senator from the twenty-ninth district, was born in Butler county, Pennsylvania, in 1860. The ancestral tree from which be sprang was rooted in the Scottish chivalry of his family name. In 1868 his parents removed to eastern Iowa, where young Graham passed through the average career of the country farmer schoolboy, He was his father's only support in his declining days, which fact accounts for the frequent interruption in the progress of the young man's studies. At the age of twenty, having lost his mother, and his father having sold the farm, Loyal entered Lenox College,

Iowa, and graduated from a five years' classical course in 1884. He came to Nebraska and taught for years as principal of graded schools. Drifting into the law, he was admitted to the bar in 1890, and has continued the practice. He located in Frontier county the same year of his admission, was elected county attorney, and reelected in 1892. Although still a young man, he is ripe in advanced thought and fixed principles of true political economy. He is an ardent supporter of the political creed of his party, and a firm believer in the future permanence of ideas entertained and advanced by the people's independent party. In 1887 Mr. Graham was married to Miss Carrie Taylor, of Bennett, Nebraska, and two girls and one boy contribute to the happiness of their home life. Senator Graham is chairman of the committee on state university and normal schools, and member of the judiciary, finance, ways and means, school lands and funds, state prison, immigration, revenue, and irrigation committees.

R. O. GROTHAN, senator from the seventeenth district, settled on a homestead in Howard county, Nebraska with his widowed mother in 1872. The son was then twelve years of age. He continued to work on the farm, and attended country schools until the fall of 1876, when he obtained a situation in a store in Grand Island. The following spring he was intrusted (sic) with the entire management of the business during a year's absence of the proprietor. In 1879 he left for Norway,

where he attended college, returning in 1882. Owing to failure in health he was obliged to discontinue his studies until 1884, when he entered upon the study of medicine in Louisville, Kentucky, and graduated in 1886. By natural ability and industry during the three years course, he won the highest honors in his class of from seventy to one hundred students in a competitive examination. In the first he received one of two scholarships; the second, a gold medal, and the third, one of two honor medals awarded for the highest standing in all branches taught. The doctor practiced medicine with success at Scotia for five years, when he removed to his present location, St. Paul, Nebraska. He took a post- graduate year in the hospitals of Chicago, and again received the degree of M. D. from Rush Medical College in 1894. He is now surgeon-in-charge of the St. Paul Hospital, president of the Loup Valley Medical Society, and vice president of the Nebraska State Medical Society. From boyhood Dr. Grothan has been a democrat, and a faithful believer in the doctrine of reform politics. Senator Grothan is chairman of the committees on medical societies, asylums, and a member of the committees on military affairs, railroads, state prison, revenue, soldiers' home, and standing committees.
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ORMER residents of the "Badger state" are many in Nebraska, and among these is numbered W. D. Hiller, senator from the tenth district. Mr. Haller's parents were Swiss and came to America in 1833, settling upon a farm near East Troy, Wisconsin, where, on April 27, 1846, he was born. He grew to young manhood on the farm, and at the age of twenty found himself possessed of good health, an ambition to strike out for himself, and equipped to do life's battle with such education as usually falls to the lot of a farmer's son, topped out with a college course at Berea, Ohio. He entered the employ of J. H. Cooper, at Burlington, Wisconsin, the leading druggist. His companion clerk was the doctor's son, Henry A. Cooper, present congressman from first Wisconsin district. After four years of close application to business he ended his engagement with Dr. Cooper, possessed of a thorough knowledge of pharmacy and no inconsiderable learning of the physician's art. In 1871 he established himself in the drug business at Blair, Nebraska, and which he has since followed. Liberal in his dealings, fair and honest in his daily walk, and progressive in all matters relating to the public weal, he has never failed to win friends and hold them. The Nebraska druggists insisted that he should serve as a