THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 359 



evening. They expected some response and hoped for from one 

 to three pupils in attendance at each school perhaps one hun- 

 dred and fifty the county over. 



These country folk had all the excuses that any toil-worn 

 people ever had. There were rugged roads to travel, high hills 

 to climb, streams without bridges to cross, children to lead, 

 and babes to carry; but they were not seeking excuses, they 

 were seeking knowledge. And so they came. They came, some 

 singly and alone ; they came hurrying in groups ; they came trav- 

 eling for miles; they came carrying babes in arms; they came 

 bent with age and leaning on canes; they came 1,200 strong. 



The youngest student was eighteen, and the oldest eighty-six. 

 Some learned to write their names the first evening, and some 

 required two evenings for this feat. Their joy in this achieve- 

 ment, simple though it was, is beyond the power of pen to de- 

 scribe. They wrote their names on trees, fences, posts, barns, 

 barrel-staves, and every available scrap of paper. Those who 

 possessed even meager means drew it out of hiding and deposited 

 it in bank, writing their checks and signing their names with 

 childish pride. Letters soon began to go to loved ones in other 

 counties and far distant states. 



Usually the first of these letters came to the office of the 

 county superintendent. Romantic in the history of this move- 

 ment is the fact that the first three letters written from the 

 moonlight schools came in this order: the first from a mother 

 who had children absent in the West ; the second from the man 

 who had said he would give twenty years of his life if he could 

 read and write, and the third from the boy who would forget 

 his ballads before anybody came along to set them down. 



Educators were skeptical of the plan, and freely predicted 

 that after the novelty had worn off, the interest would wane. 

 But in the second session, the first year's record was surpassed 

 in every particular: 1,600 were enrolled, 350 learned to read 

 and write, and a man eighty-seven years old entered and put to 

 shame the record of the proud "school-girl" of eighty-six of the 

 year before. 



There were many incidents of really remarkable individual de- 

 velopment. A man who had labored for years at $1.50 a day 

 enrolled, specializing in mathematics in that particular branch 



