I stood in the door of New Hope school-house one evening and watched the throng come trooping through the moonlight to school. There were farmers and farmers’ wives, and their grown sons and daughters; there were former school teachers who had seized this opportunity to break up the stagnation which had overtaken them; there was the community carpenter, the district blacksmith, the postmaster and his wife, the country doctor, the cross-roads merchant, the mill-owner with his crew of illiterate men, all coming joyously, hopefully in quest of knowledge. It was “new hope” indeed to them. Some came to learn, some to teach, but all learned, for those who taught developed amazingly. “Everybody in school” was the ideal, and it was caught and cherished by children as well as parents. The children exerted a powerful influence in getting their parents to school. The teachers would say to them at the close of the day, “Now, children go home and send your parents to school this evening,” and while it was a pleasantry, it was, also, a request and one that they heeded. The children were wonderful recruiting officers for the moonlight schools. They worked and reported their success with the keen enthusiasm of childhood. One little fellow listened to the others and said sorrowfully, “I talked moonlight schools too but it didn’t do any good.” He persisted, however, and the words, “A little child shall lead them” proved literally true, for the following evening he came to school proudly leading his mother by one hand and his father by the other. A thousand seeds sown by teachers and school children this year did not bear fruit until the next. Some who did not yield to persuasion and come out to school were found learning in secret at home. However, there were few who did not seek the school more earnestly than it sought them. These few, from pride, and false pride it was, feared to expose their illiteracy and thought to hide it by remaining at home. For such as these and the stubborn, the decrepit and the disinclined, a home department was established. Gladys Thompson, a blessed teacher, gone to her reward, and whom these pages would memorialize, finding two in her district who could not attend school at night, one because of feebleness and the other because of defective sight, went to their homes between the hours of her day school and moonlight school and taught them to read and write. Her plan was adopted and proved a valuable adjunct to the work of the moonlight school, especially in dissolving the dregs of illiteracy, in teaching the last few or the lone, difficult one. Besides the incidents of individual development and individual achievement, a new community spirit was born. A school trustee thus describes the change in his community: