"Noel is the most careful chauffeur I ever saw, and we were just trundling along out in the Bronx, when, without a word of warning, a little bit of a boy jumped from a crowd of children and stumbled right in front of us. I saw him fall, and to my dying day I never shall forget the sight of his little white, upturned face as he disappeared under the machine. We ran right squarely over him!
"I stood up and screamed out: ’You said accidents could not happen! You promised! You promised! We have not hurt that baby! He is alive! He is not hurt! He is not even run over!’ And by that time we had both jumped down and run back, and a big crowd was gathering. Talk about treating audibly! I was screeching at the top of my voice. Yet still there lay the child apparently dead. I picked him up in my arms and sat down in the mud with him, still, as Noel declares, talking aloud. Oh, Carolina, I never shall forget the sight of his little hands! So dirty, but so _little_! And his little limp body,--I feel as if I had it in my lap still. The crowd kept getting bigger, and some policemen came, and suddenly, with a scream I never can forget even in my dreams, the child’s mother rushed up. She raised her fist to strike me in the face, and I thought I was done for, when suddenly the child’s eyes opened, and something made me say: ’Here is your baby, little woman. He is not hurt at all!’ She fairly snatched him from me and began to feel him all over, but she could find no broken bones. She was crying and laughing and kissing him, and I still kept telling her that he was unhurt. Just then the police got through with Noel, and he insisted on putting mother and child and a policeman in the tonneau and taking them to the nearest hospital to have the child examined. We did so, and, if you will believe it, there wasn’t a scratch on him. He either fainted from fright or we stunned him, the doctor said.
"Two of the surgeons came out and examined the machine, and they found that there is only a foot of space between the lowest part of the car and the ground.
"’It is the most miraculous escape I ever saw,’ said one of them, ’to run over a five-year-old boy and not even scratch him. To make the story quite complete you ought to claim to be Christian Scientists. That is the sort of game they always play on a credulous public.’