“While we were wandering up and down the little stream called Knob Creek Abe said: ‘Right up there’--pointing to the east--‘we saw a covey of partridges yesterday. Let’s go over and get some of them.’ The stream was swollen and was too wide for us to jump across. Finally we saw a narrow foot-log, and we concluded to try it. It was narrow, but Abe said, ‘Let’s coon it.’ “I went first and reached the other side all right. Abe went about half-way across, when he got scared and began trembling. I hollered to him, ‘Don’t look down nor up nor sideways, but look right at me and hold on tight!’ But he fell off into the creek, and, as the water was about seven or eight feet deep and I could not swim, and neither could Abe, I knew it would do no good for me to go in after him. “So I got a stick--a long water sprout--and held it out to him. He came up, grabbing with both hands, and I put the stick into his hands. He clung to it, and I pulled him out on the bank, almost dead. I got him by the arms and shook him well, and then rolled him on the ground, when the water poured out of his mouth. “He was all right very soon. We promised each other that we would never tell anybody about it, and never did for years. I never told any one of it until after Lincoln was killed.” LINCOLN’S YOUTHFUL ELOQUENCE. One man in Gentryville, Ind., a Mr. Jones, the storekeeper, took a Louisville paper, and here Lincoln went regularly to read and discuss its contents. All the men and boys of the neighborhood gathered there, and everything which the paper related was subjected to their keen, shrewd common sense. It was not long before young Lincoln became the favorite member of the group and the one listened to most eagerly. Politics was warmly discussed by these Gentryville citizens, and it may be that sitting on the counter of Jones’ grocery Lincoln even discussed slavery. It certainly was one of the live questions of Indiana at that date. Young Lincoln was not only winning in those days in the Jones grocery store a reputation as a debater and story teller, but he was becoming known as a kind of backwoods orator. He could repeat with effect all the poems and speeches in his various school readers, he could imitate to perfection the wandering preachers who came to Gentryville, and he could make a political speech so stirring that he drew a crowd about him every time he mounted a stump. The applause he won was sweet, and frequently he indulged his gifts when he ought to have been at work--so thought his employers and Thomas, his father. It was trying, no doubt, to the hard pushed farmers to see the men who ought to have been cutting grass or chopping wood throw down their sickles or axes to group around a boy whenever he mounted a stump to develop a pet theory or repeat with variations yesterday’s sermon. In his fondness for speech-making he attended all the trials of the neighborhood and frequently walked 15 miles to Booneville to attend court.