At the beginning of the year 1878, upon the recomendation of various prominent physicians of the city, he was made medical superintendent of the extensive hospitals connected with the Cook County Infirmary, and entered upon the discharge of his important duties at once. The most important department of this hospital system, was what has become generally known as the Cook County Insane Asylum. In assuming the management of this institution, Dr. Spray found himself charged with the responsibility of looking after the care. and treatment of over five hundred insane patients, at the beginning of his official career, and this number was doubled at a later periòd.

In the other hospital departments, patients suffering from all kinds of injuries and ailments, were necessarily received for treatment, and as a natural consequence, constant care and watchfulness on the part of the superintendent became necessary. The position was one which not only required that its occupant should be posessed of professional skill, but of a high order of executive ability as well. A critical public and a still more critical press watches closely the course pursued by those who are called upon to care for that class of unfortunates in any community who are supported at public expense, and only the official who discharges his duty faithfully can long escape censure, or win commendation in the end.

That Dr. Spray held this important position more than ten years, notwithstanding various changes in the political complexion and personel of the board governing the institufion, attests the value of his services, and the fidelity with which he discharged his official obligations.

During a considerable portion of the ten years that he was connected with the hospital, as medical superintendent, he was also chief financial and executive officer, and acting in this capacity he won from the public, warm commendation for his economical conduct of the institution. While giving to those under his care every medical attention, and supplying them with everything necessary to their comfort, the numerous extravagances which are frequently characteristic of the management of similar institutions, were never indulged in, and the result was probably the most favorable financial showing in the history of the institution.

In disbursing several hundred thousands of dollars, both the public interest and the welfare of patients were kept constantly in mind. during Dr. Spray's administration of the asylum's affairs, and at no time. was either his integrity or his ability. questioned. In view of the fact that the institution during this time passed through the most stormy period of its existence, and that numerous officials connected with county affairs became implicated in and received punishment for grave irregularities, the

sterling integrity which characterized Dr. Spray's management of the interests committed to his charge, established for him an enviable reputation, and few men who have held public positions of equal importance in Chicago, within the past twentyfive years, have retired to private life, enjoying in a greater measure, the confidence and esteem of the general public. While he was always a Democrat in politics and took a somewhat active interest in promoting by legitimate and proper means the fortunes of his party, his political predilections were never allowed to influence his official actions, or in any way to interfere with the carrying out of his plans for the betterment of the institution.

When he retired from this position which he had filled with so great a measure of credit to himself, and in which he had earned the plaudit "well done," the only reward conferred upon a faithful public servant in this country when he ceases to be a public servant, it was to engage again in the practice of his profession, enriched only by an experience. which could hardly have been gained in any other field of professional labor. Since the early part of 1889 he has been engaged in private practice, treating with marked success the class of woman's disorders, to the study of which he has devoted so large a share of his attention.

HOWARD LOUIS CONARD.

WHEN John Jay Shipherd was sent, in 1830, by the American Home Missionary Society to the little Presbyterian church in Elyria, O., he carried with him an idea that had long been forming in his mind, and that was destined to expand into one of the great educational and religious forces of America. Despite the popular impression, Oberlin does not represent, primarily, an opposition to slavery; nor did the famous Oberlin covenant make mention of that question in any form. Circumstances having in themselves little relation to Oberlin

made it eventually one of the bravest and foremost champions of the rights of man, without regard to color. But had Father Keep-on that memorable day when the Oberlin trustees were debating whether or no to open the doors of their new institution to the seceding students of Lane Seminary-cast his deciding vote "No," instead of "Yes," the whole history of Oberlin would have been changed, and the name would never have acquired the grand distinction that attached to it in later days.

The story of this village and college -for the two can never be separated -is one of the most entertaining and unique to be found in the whole history of America. Mr. Shipherd was governed by an intense conviction that the church, as it then existed, should be raised to a higher plane; that love, Christian fellowship and mutual helpfulness should be the foundation of the social structure; and he had long dreamed of founding a community where these ideas should be carried into practice. He found a kindred spirit in Philo Penfield Stewart, who had been a missionary to the Choctaws, but had become a member of Mr. Shipherd's family at Elyria. The two spent many earnest hours over the serious problem of materializing their vision into a visible thing of life-the one, longing for a Christian community where men should be brothers, and all laboring for the church and the general good; and the other, seeking the more modest and tangible realization of a college that should embrace the co-education of the sexes and provide the means of manual labor by which the poorest could work his way to an education equal to the best. Out of a combination of these two dreams came Oberlin, and all that the name implies.

Both were men of the strictest piety, and with them all matters were made a subject of prayer. One day, while upon their knees, the whole scheme unfolded itself to Mr.

Shipherd's mind: to secure a tract of land, and place upon it a community of men minded as themselves, who should be pledged to carry out the main ideas upon which the whole was founded. The name of this yet unformed colony was suggested by the labors of the famous but humble John Frederic Oberlin, whose pastoral labors in Eastern France had caused his name to be enrolled among the world's religious heroes. Their eyes were next turned toward New England, not only because it was the fountain-head from which came the early settlers of northern Ohio, but because only in New England could be found the men and women who could make the experiment possible. An option was obtained upon five thousand acres of land in Russia township, Lorain county; and, with the work so far progressed, Shipherd and Stewart took counsel with themselves and asked for help from on high, and out of their reflections and petitions, the famous Oberlin Covenant was created.

That memorable and unique document opened with a lamentation over "the degeneracy of the church," and the "deplorable condition of our perishing world," recognized the influence sure to be exerted by the great Mississippi valley upon the nations of the earth; and proceeded to a series of declarations that were the foundations of Oberlin, and have been the mainsprings of its remarkable career. Each signer pledged

himself to remove, as soon as practicable, to Russia township and become a member of Oberlin colony, "for the express purpose of glorifying God, in doing good to men," to the extent of their ability; to manage his estate personally, but to hold a community of interest; to hold no more property than he believed could be profitably managed in the service of God; to be industrious and economic, eat only plain and wholesome food; renounce all bad habits, especially the smoking and chewing of tobacco, "unless it is necessary as a medicine," and to also deny himself "all strong and unnecessary drinks, even tea and coffee, as far as practicable, and everything expensive, that is simply calculated to gratify the palate." The renunciation of all "expensive and unwholesome fashions of dress, particularly tight dressing and ornamental attire; " plainness and durability in the construction of their houses, furniture and carriages, were in so many words announced. The widows and orphans, and families of the sick were to be provided for; the children were to be educated, and trained up in the service of the Lord; all were to hold a close, personal interest in Oberlin Institute; while “a deep-toned and elevated personal piety" was to be striven for by all.

When a few men of serious minds had pledged themselves as brothers under this covenant, the active work of colony planting in the Russia for

ests was commenced. The first tree cut was on March 15, 1833, when Peter Pindar Pease, Oberlin's pioneer resident, laid the foundations of his log-cabin, upon the front door of which were written the words: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." A road was cut through the woods in the direction of Brownhelm, and the first ox-team came toiling in, with the effects of the Pease household. There is an arcadian freshness, simplicity, and earnestness about these beginnings in the dense forests, in a new land, that compel the attention to linger about the spot, and prove that there are springs of human action deeper than the love of self. The few who were there, gathered in a little group. on their first Sabbath, and held religious service, and opened a Sabbath school which has not failed in a single weekly session in these near sixty years. An opening of some twenty feet square in the forest, where the Indians had made a clearing for a camp, was utilized for the first meeting of the trustees of this proposed school. In June, all the men then upon the ground, ten in number, united in a letter to Mr. Shipherd, who was in the east, in which they said: "We have about twenty acres chopped, and four cleared off. Are planting two of it to corn, and more than one we sow to oats and grass,

for a little pasture. The remainder is occupied by two log houses, and a site of the boarding house and school room. The school will be in the upper loft. The brethren have mostly selected and procured their land, and are now chopping their village lots. We can say, thus far the Lord hath helped us. May we ever acknowledge Him. Dear brother, pray for the peace of the colony. We have a special prayer meeting every Saturday evening."

The school was opened on December 3d of the same year, with fortyfive students, half of whom came from the east, and the rest from the immediate neighborhood. A charter was obtained in the year following under the name "The Oberlin Collegiate Institute," but with full university privileges. From the first annual report of the institute, it is learned that the entire expenses of the students, with the exception of clothing, during the forty weeks of term time, ranged from fifty-eight to eighty-nine dollars; and that in most cases this amount could be earned by four hours of work daily, in the occupations provided by the community. Affairs had so advanced, that by the end of the second year, Oberlin contained thirty-five families; the church eighty members; the college over one hundred students; with land, buildings and other property, valued at more than seventeen thousand dollars.

The stern rigidity suggested in the Covenant, was carried into all the

affairs of school and social life. Tea and coffee were forbidden in college hall, and were seldom used in any of the village households. In one of the colony meetings it was questioned whether they should be furnished the guests at the hotel, but common commercial prudence decided in the affirmative. The boarders in college hall paid seventy-five cents per week for a strictly vegetable diet, which sum was made one dollar when meat was served twice a day. Mr. Stewart, one of the founders, had charge of the culinary department, and was afraid there was too much of luxury in their method of living, and one day when the students were disposing of the graham bread, diluted gravy and salt, he startled them with the question, "Can we not substitute parched corn for our graham diet, and thus save something with which to feed God's lambs?"

While Oberlin had begun to attract attention in all directions because of its unique character, and was be lieved in by many, and ridiculed by as many more, an event occured that set its influence and power running into a new channel, and gave it that distinctive seal that made it for many years unlike any educational institution in the land. The students of Lane Theological Seminary, near Cincinnati, being forbidden to further discuss the slavery question, seceded almost in a body, and looked about for some institution in which they would be free to