In 1818, a terrible but common epidemic, known in Western America as the milk-fever, broke out in Indiana, and within a few days Thomas and Betsy Sparrow and Mrs. Lincoln all died. They had no medical attendance, and it was nine months before a clergyman, named David Elkin, invited by the first letter which Abraham ever wrote, came one hundred miles to hold the funeral service and preach over the graves. Strange as it may seem, the event which is universally regarded as the saddest of every life, in the case of Abraham Lincoln led directly to greater happiness, and to a change which conduced to the development of all his better qualities. Thirteen months after the death of Nancy Lincoln, Thomas married a widow, Mrs. Johnston, whom he had wooed ineffectually in Kentucky when she was Miss Sally Bush. She was a woman of sense, industrious, frugal, and gifted with a pride which inspired her to lead a far more civilised life than that which satisfied poor Tom Lincoln. He had greatly exaggerated to her the advantages of his home in Indiana, and she was bitterly disappointed when they reached it. Fortunately, she owned a stock of good furniture, which greatly astonished little Abraham and Sarah and their cousin Dennis. “She set about mending matters with great energy, and made her husband put down a floor, and hang windows and doors.” It was in the depth of winter, and the children, as they nestled in the warm beds she had provided, enjoying the strange luxury of security from the cold winds of December, must have thanked her from the depths of their hearts. She had brought a son and two daughters of her own, but Abraham and his sister had an equal place in her affections. They were half naked, and she clad them; they were dirty, and she washed them; they had been ill-used, and she treated them with motherly tenderness. In her own language, she “made them look a little more human.”[7] This excellent woman loved Abraham tenderly, and her love was warmly returned. After his death she declared to Mr. Herndon--“I can say what not one mother in ten thousand can of a boy--Abe never gave me a cross look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested him; nor did I ever give him a cross word in all my life. His mind and mine--what little I had--seemed to run together. He was dutiful to me always. Abe was the best boy I ever saw, or ever expect to see.” “When in after years Mr. Lincoln spoke of his ‘saintly mother’ and of his ‘angel of a mother,’ he referred to this noble woman, who first made him feel ‘like a human being’--whose goodness first touched his childish heart, and taught him that blows and taunts and degradation were not to be his only portion in the world.” And if it be recorded of George Washington that he never told a lie, it should also be remembered of Abraham Lincoln, who carried his country safely through a greater crisis than that of the Revolutionary War,[8] that he always obeyed his mother.