A key to the parade ground.
Would that be a joke?
Can’t you see it?
No, I cannot.
Did you ever see a key to a field?
No, I see. The joke is on me.
On the hot summer evenings of July and August, 1917, Kentucky boys, subject to army service, wended their way to the moonlight schools. These men had a new and powerful incentive. Many of them had never known a week’s absence from home, and some had journeyed no farther away than the county seat, to return to their own roof-trees at night. They now faced separation from all who were dear, separation by a distance of three thousand miles, and in a situation of constant danger which would stir every emotion of the heart and demand some connection with the ones at home. Their extremity was great, and they realized it. This was evident by the numbers that came, the grim determination with which they attacked their books and their unconcealed joy over a simple lesson learned. Their teachers had a feeling of tenderness toward them and a desire to help them that amounted to exaltation equal to that, no doubt, felt by any who served and sacrificed during the War. Knowledge was never so glorified as it was those nights in the moonlight schools, when the soldiers clutched at it as hungry men for bread and the teachers bestowed it as manna with heavenly grace.
New speed records were made in the time required to learn to read and write. The men in the first draft who had missed the moonlight schools were met by teachers at the station where they entrained and rendered “first aid” in reading and writing for a day or an hour as the time would permit. It was in one of these first-aid classes that the champion record was made. A bridegroom, torn from the arms of his bride whom he had married but the day before, sought to learn in one day’s time that he might write a love letter back to her. Not the next week nor on the morrow did he desire to write her, but it must be done that very day. According to the poet,
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid,
Some banished lover or some captive maid,