What do you think about it, gentle reader? Is it a passing fancy? A fad, if you please? Or is it a means for training boys and girls to habits of industry and to a wholesome respect for honest toil? Will it bring the home and the school into closer relation? And will it cause the country boys and girls to love their homes, to love the country with its singing birds, its babbling brooks, its broad fields and friendly hills?
There was not a school in the State that responded better to any movement initiated by the State or county than the one in Spring Valley. Every pupil was greatly interested in the boys' and girls' industrial and agricultural contest which Oregon carried on that year for the first time. The children raised cabbage plants at school, protected from the cold by a tent that Mr. O'Reilly provided. They planned to sell them to the neighbors in order to get money for seeds, but were sadly disappointed, when they came to school one morning, to find that a cow had broken in during the night and destroyed almost every plant. The owner of the cow paid them the value of the plants, but they were never quite so happy over the fund as they would have been if the plants had been allowed to grow.
Six weeks before the end of the school year Mr. O'Reilly began making Saturday trips to Salem to arrange for the fair with which he intended to close the school. The merchants subscribed liberally for prizes both for the children's work and for the athletic events which Mr. O'Reilly had planned for the afternoon. A local piano house sent out a piano for the occasion, and an amusement company put up a merry-go-round, and stands for lemonade, ice-cream, and all the rest that goes with a first-class picnic. The picnic was held in the grove a short distance from the schoolhouse. Mr. O'Reilly and the neighbors had made a platform for which the children's work formed the background,--dresses, bird houses, fancy work, cakes, bread, and other articles,--and had made seats of rough lumber for the crowd. And a crowd it was, for the whole county was interested in the Spring Valley School. This was one of the first local fairs in connection with the county school fairs which were held throughout the State, and the awards were also to be made to the children who had earned the most credits in the home credit contest.