"Good boy, swim for it! You'll get it!" shouted Uncle Henry.
Caspar understood the word "swim," but not the rest. He thought the kite man must be telling him that he could not swim, either. He looked out to the flag; it was surely going into the water; it flapped and dipped, then dipped deeper still, right into the water. Caspar did not wait another minute. Off went his jacket, and with a wild look toward the shore, he ran into the water. His feet slipped on the sandy bottom, and the kite jerked up, then down, then up--but it was always just out of reach.
They watched the boy, who was trying hard to keep the flag in sight.
"Hurry, hurry, Uncle Henry, he can't swim a stroke!" shouted Harry.
Uncle Henry was just in time; Caspar had a firm hold on Old Glory, and came up tangled in its folds.
After Uncle Henry had shaken the water out of the boy, he sat him on his shoulder, where everybody could see him. "Now, one, two, three!" he said, as he waved his free arm. "All cheer for the boy who would not let the flag be lost even if he couldn't swim! Hoo-ray!"
"Hoo-ray! hoo-ray! hoo-ray!" they said; and then they cheered all over again, and crowded round Uncle Henry and Caspar until the pair started home to put on dry clothes.
When little Caspar went home that night, he carried the flag that he had saved. Grandmother had washed and dried it, and it looked as good as new.
How would you like to have begun life in a little log cabin set in the midst of a western wilderness? Suppose, too, that the cabin had no window and so many cracks that it let in the winter winds and even the snow!
That was how little Abe first saw life a long time ago, in February of 1809. It was rough life for a small boy. Even his mother had to know how to shoot, for the cabin was in the woods where wild beasts and Indians surrounded it. There was nothing to eat except what Abe's father raised or hunted. They had nothing to wear except the cloth his mother spun and wove, or the skins of animals.
By the time little Abe was six years old, though, he had learned more than a boy of that age to-day. He could fish and hunt. He was not afraid of Indians. He could catch hold of a sycamore tree on the edge of the brook outside the cabin, and swing himself way across the brook.