In a climactic scene towards the end of the novel, Dick saves a child who accidentally falls overboard while riding a ferry. In this scene, Alger uses pathos to highlight the stakes of the situation and the extent of Dick's bravery. Alger describes the child's fall and his father's panic in exceptionally dramatic language:
At the child’s scream, the father looked up, and, with a cry of horror, sprang to the edge of the boat. He would have plunged in, but, being unable to swim, would only have endangered his own life, without being able to save his child.
Alger rarely uses ornamental language, and the prose in this passage is fairly straightforward. Still, dramatic verbs like "sprang" and phrases like "a cry of horror" distinguish this episode from the rest of the novel, alerting the reader to the fact that this is an important moment. Alger's choice to show a child drowning in front of a helpless father is an instance of pathos; the scene plays on the reader's instinctive sympathy for familial bonds (as well as the "horror" of a parent unable to save a child) to heighten the scene's emotional impact.
Alger describes Dick's rescue effort in far more detail than he devotes to most scenes, emphasizing the protagonist's "determination," the child's helplessness, and the father's "terror and anguish." After Dick saves the child, the father, Mr. Rockwell, vows to reward him in a statement as dramatic as the rescue itself:
“God be thanked! [...] That brave boy shall be rewarded, if I sacrifice my whole fortune to compass it.”
Here, Alger uses Dick's brave actions and the highly emotional tenor of the scene to convey that Dick deserves a reward and will receive one. Ultimately, Mr. Rockwell turns out to be a successful businessman and offers Dick a job in his counting-house, completing Dick's transformation from poor boot-black to rising professional. This outcome fits neatly into the linear upward trajectory Dick has followed for the whole novel, but the life-saving feat through which Dick meets his new employer makes the novel's ending more emotionally satisfying. For the most part, the novel has relied on logos and ethos—arguments based on reason or on a speaker's credibility—to explore its thematic concerns and direct Dick's course in life. The use of pathos here signals that the novel has reached its narrative and emotional climax.
