A single generation, passed under the hard conditions of life in the wilderness, was enough to weld together into one people the representatives of these numerous and widely different races; and the children of the next generation became indistinguishable from one another. Long before the first Continental Congress assembled, the backwoodsmen, whatever their blood, had become Americans, one in speech, thought and character, clutching firmly to the land in which their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them. They had lost all remembrance of Europe and all sympathy with things European; they had become as emphatically products native to the soil as were the tough and supple hickories out of which they fashioned the handles of their long, light axes. Their grim, harsh, narrow lives were yet strangely fascinating and full of adventurous toil and danger; none but natures as strong, as freedom-loving and as full of bold defiance as theirs could have endured existence on the terms which these men found pleasurable. Their iron surroundings made a mould which turned out all alike in the same shape. They resembled one another, and they differed from the rest of the world--even the world of America, and infinitely more the world of Europe--in dress, in customs and in mode of life. CHAPTER II THE ORIGIN OF THE MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS Strange impressions have prevailed in regard to the moonlight schools. Some have imagined them to be schools where children study and play and scamper on the green, like fairies by the moonlight; others have supposed them to be schools where lovers stroll arm-in-arm, quote poetry and tell the old, old story by the light of a witching moon; others, perhaps because these schools originated in the mountains of Kentucky, have speculated upon their being schools where moonshiners, youthful and aged, are instructed in the best method of extracting the juice from the corn, and, at the same time, one so secretive as to prevent government interference. Moonlight schools were first established in September, 1911. They had their origin in Rowan County, Kentucky. They were designed, primarily, to emancipate from illiteracy all those enslaved in its bondage. They were, also, intended to afford an opportunity to those of limited education who desired to improve their store of knowledge. These schools grew out of the only condition that can give to any institution permanent and substantial growth--an imperative human need. This need was expressed, not by any theorist or group of theorists but by the illiterates themselves.