"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 (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 I 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 till after Lincoln was killed." Abraham Lincoln's parents were religious in their simple way. The boy was brought up to believe in the care of the Father in Heaven over the affairs of this life. The family attended camp meetings and preaching services, which were great events, because few and far between, in those primitive days. Abe used afterward to get his playmates together and preach to them in a way that sometimes frightened them and made them cry. No doubt young Lincoln learned more that was useful to him in after life from the wandering preachers of his day than he did of his teachers during the few months that he was permitted to go to school. But his best teacher was his mother. She would have been proud to have her boy grow up to be a traveling minister or exhorter, like Peter Cartwright, "the backwoods preacher." Nancy Hanks Lincoln "builded better than she knew." She would have been satisfied with a cabin life for her son. She little knew that by her own life and teaching she was raising up the greatest man of his age, and one of the grandest men in all history, to become the ruler of the greatest nation that the world has ever seen. She did her duty by her little boy and he honored her always during her life and afterward. No wonder he once exclaimed when he thought of her: "All I am or hope to be I owe to my sainted mother." And out of her poor, humble life, that devoted woman "Gave us Lincoln and never knew!" CHAPTER IV LEARNING TO WORK The little Lincoln boy learned to help his father and mother as soon as he could, picking berries, dropping seeds and carrying water for the men to drink. The farm at Knob Creek seems to have been a little more fertile than the other two places on which his father had chosen to live. Once while living in the White House, President Lincoln was asked if he could remember his "old Kentucky home." He replied with considerable feeling: