Now, to understand what follows, I suppose you ought to feel the exact situation as Virginia and I did. There we stood at the center of what has been rated as the money heart of the greatest city of this republic. Things have been done by men in this historic street that have ruined other men, deals made in staggering sums of wealth, where not one stroke of honest labor was involved, by which men have made or lost fortunes. Men on the prairies of Kansas and in the factories of New England have had their entire personal histories shaped and their savings depleted by the transactions of men whose very names they have not known, who have met in brokers’ offices in this street and transacted so-called business affairs, the object of which has been to secure vast fortunes for themselves entirely regardless of what disaster might fall on others. Here in this narrow street, men have gambled for years for money. The great god worshipped in this street is Money. Wall Street has been a synonym all over the country for speculation, deals, financial jugglery, and greed, and without any equivalent being paid in the way of honest labor.

All this, of course, you know more or less, as every American citizen knows, but I doubt if anyone could feel it as we did today, standing right there in the very presence of it. The very word “money” seemed to cry out in our ears from the buildings and the men, and the very statue of Washington himself seemed to possess some inscrutable knowledge of the many selfish plans and money-loving schemes of this street in which that mass of men stood, all facing with sharp intentness toward the figure up there by the statue, holding the little girl in his arms.

How had he come there? Where had he been in New York all this time during the weeks that had elapsed since his first appearance at the Ministers’ Conference? No one could answer. All anyone seemed to know was that he had appeared at the noon hour holding the little girl in his arms, standing there by the statue, calm, silent, stern, waiting for the hearing that he seemed to expect would be his, without any previous announcement, with no herald to go before, with no other irresistible attraction except his own personality.

And like magic, the street swarmed with men. Before Virginia and I could reach the foot of the steps leading up past the statue, the entire space had almost been covered. We managed to get up on the second step, and there we were hemmed in by the silent crowd.

After he began to speak, absolute silence prevailed.

The little girl looked Italian. She had one hand on Jesus’s shoulder, and the other was holding a little wreath of forget-me-nots such as are frequently seen in the ten-cent stores.