YOUTHFUL HEROINES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 37, 14 January 1898, Page 6

YOUTHFUL HEROINES.

One need not be a boy in order to be brave, declares a writer. The United States lately had two very heroic episodes within a few days of each other, and in each case the " hero " was a heroine, and a very small heroine at that. At Grand Rapids, Mich., Gertie Anderson, eight years old, saved the lives of two score of people. She was picking strawberries beside the railroad track, which runs near some subterranean lakes, the pricise location of which had never been known and which were not regarded as dangerous.

A passenger train passed the child, and almost immediately after she was horrified to see two hundred feet of track disappear under water. The regular train was due in a short time, and the child, realising the danger, ran down the road and waved her gunbonnet when the train came in sight. Fortunately the engineer saw the signal, and stopped just in time, The passengers made up a purse on the spot for their brave little deliverer, who, childlike, was so frightened when all was over that she had to be carried home.

In San Francisco, the baby daughter of a captain of a steamer fell from the wharf into the water. Little Katie O'Connell, nine years old, saw the baby fall, and plunged in after it. She grasped the little one's skirts, and clung with the other hand to the pier until help came, when she was taken out almost exhausted. The grateful father had a gold medal made for the little girl who saved his baby.

The coolness and courage of these children shows that these qualities may be developed very early in life, and in girls as well as boys.