“Wait! No man ever knows all that’s in a girl’s heart. Early in life when she was just a little child as pictured yonder, she was the victim of a ferry boat collision off Cortlandt Street. My old lady friend--the one I live with--is her relative. I have seen Miss Vandilever many times, and have often read her story in some old newspapers. She was but eight years old when the accident occurred, and in the care of an old negro nurse on the boat. The family were on their way up from the South, and the little girl and her nurse had gone out of the cabin to the deck to see the lights. When the collision occurred, both were thrown into the river. In the confusion of the moment and noise of whistles and the screams, the minor accident was not noticed nor were the cries of the woman and child heard except by one person, a boy of sixteen or seventeen, who was also out to see the lights, and probably New York for the first time. This boy plunged into the river from the sinking boat and succeeded in reaching the little girl. Then--how, only the good God who was watching, knows--he got out of his coat and kicked off his shoes and would probably have swum to the wharves with her, but a tug, at full speed and blowing its whistle for other boats to come, ran over them. Shall I wait for the organ to stop?” “No, your voice and that music were made for just such a story. The tug ran over them--” “As it struck, the boy seized the dress of the child at the throat, with his teeth, covered her face with his hands, and went down with her. The boat passed, and they rose and whirled in the foam of its wake. The boy’s teeth held like a bulldog’s, though the barnacles on the tug had torn his side cruelly and something had broken his left arm. He could now only support the child by swimming on his back, her face drawn up to his breast, her hands clinging to his shoulders, and body floating free.” “He knew how to save a drowning person, who wasn’t panic-stricken. It must have been a brave child to keep her head through it all.” “As they drifted on with the tide, unseen, he comforted her, promising he would be sure to get her to the land and take her home. He stopped calling for help when he found his voice frightened her. And then he laughed to show her he was not afraid, and told her little stories of the South, where he came from, and sang the songs his black mammy sang to him when he was very little, so that the girl forgot her fears and put her faith in the wonderful boy, who knew so much, and had come to help her.