Once there was {an} old colony engine whose name was SUCCOTASH. He was very proud of his name and had it put on his side in brass letters. He lived in a Round house when he was at home and he had a man by the name of John Grinner who fed him and washed him and put him to bed and woke him up. He was pretty old for an engine but engines hardly ever [238] live to be as old as a man and John Grinner was a good deal older and old Succotash looked up to him and respected him and when John Grinner took him out he was very careful to mind every little hint he gave him. He would go slow and carefully or go fast; he would stop short and would back, he would whistle or exhaust or move along quietly just as John Grinner said.

There was a young rat who lived in the turntable. He was not bigger than a good sized mouse but he had got his second teeth and he thought he felt his wisdom teeth coming and had a good opinion of himself. His name was Tzaskoe, a family name that came from Norway. Tzaskoe used to come in the night when Succotash had cooled down and lick his axles. There was a taste of oil there which he liked. But old Succotash felt it to be a delicate attention in the little fellow and he did not care what the motive was. So he encouraged Tzaskoe’s visits and after a time there came to be a great friendship between the two.

Old Succotash did not care for anything to eat himself but kindling wood and coal. “Only give me coal enough and a few slivers of wood, and all the cold water I want”, he used to say to John Grinner, “and I would not give a puff for all the lobsters and molasses candy and such like kickshaws there are in all Boston.”

But John Grinner’s wife, when he went out, always used to put him up a snack of hard boiled eggs and cheese and after he had fed Succotash the fourth time he would eat it.

Succotash found out that Tzaskoe was very very fond of toasted cheese. So he used to save up the crumbs that John Grinner dropped and warm them and then in the evening he would invite Tzaskoe up on his cab and it pleased him very much to see how quickly he would leap up and how nimbly he would nibble the crumbs. After a time he was sorry to find that there were no more delicate attentions from Tzaskoe. But he continued to love Tzaskoe more and more.

As for Tzaskoe he was very proud to be made so much of by a great old engine and when he met the wharf fellows used to boast that old Succotash would do anything for him. After a time he used to take even higher airs and talk about “that old engine” and pretend that Succotash could not get along without him and that he could turn him on the end of his tail. He got so much in the habit of talking in this way that at length he began to think so.

Old Succotash’s regular work was to draw a train to Boston and back every day. After he got back he had nothing more to do but John Grinner would wash him and rub him bright and put him to bed in the round house.

But one day there was a young engine who lived in the same round house who did not do as he was told and first thing he knew he was off the track and tumbled up against a wood pile near Silver lake and threw the man who took care of him into an apple tree and tore his clothes and broke the glass and bent the reflector of his own headlight.

The man got down and tied a handkerchief over the place and sent [239] out his red flags and ran all the way to Kingston where he sent word to John Grinner by telegraph to come up with old Succotash and pull Nipyac upon the track again. Nipyac was the name of the foolish engine.

Tzaskoe had just jumped up on the cab to get his toasted cheese when John Grinner opened the round house door and told Succotash what had happened, and Tzaskoe did not like it at all. So he whispered to Succotash, “Dont go!”

“Why! What do you mean, my little Tzasky?” said Succotash, “Of course, I must go.”

“No you must not”, said the ratlet, “you will be very disobliging if you budge an inch.”

“Why”, said Succotash, “you surprise me; think of that poor Nipyac with a banged eye and off the track, and all the people that are waiting for me and the three train nearly due and the track all crowded up.”

“You think a great deal of that silly Nipyac and you don’t think anything of me”, said Tzaskoe.

`Oh!” said Succotash, “how can you say so, I think everything of you my dear little Tzaskie but this you see is a question of duty.”

“If you are a friend of mine, it’s your duty to think of me”, said Tzaskoe, “you are not a friend of mine, you are a false hearted, unfeeling brazen faced old coal eater, that’s what you are.”

When he heard these hard names Succotash choked and blubbered a little, he felt so badly, but he soon recovered himself and said very seriously and quietly “You forget how much we both owe to John Grinner: he feeds me and waters me every day; he is even now getting ready to give me an extra meal, and he gives me the cheese which I toast for you, you surely would not have me refuse to mind him would you.”

“John Grinner, John Grinner; I’m tired of hearing of John Grinner”, said the pert little nincumpoop of a rat; “When John Grinner asks you to go out after your day’s work is done and you are engaged in social duties, he is not a reasonable being.”

“How strangely you talk,” said Succotash, “John Grinner is a great deal older than I and it is not for me to say that he is not reasonable.”

“I don’t care about John Grinner” said Tzaskoe, “I say you shan’t go.”

“Shan’t?” asked the engine.

“No, you shan’t, I shall not allow you”, said Tzaskoe, and he jumped down and ran along to the rail in front of Succotash. “Now then, we will see if you prefer duty to me”, said Tzasko, and he really thought that Succotash loved him so much and was so soft hearted that he would never think of running over him. But Succotash said, “My dear Tzasko-Tzasko; John Grinner takes care of me, and gives me coal and water and watches over me and tells me what to do, and keeps me out of accidents and without him I should not be able to do anything. If he makes mistakes it is his fault not mine, but if I don’t do what he tells me to it is my fault and I should be a mean, ungrateful [240] smokey old humbug if I stopped a second when he said go; so I pray and beg of you to get right off the track.”

But the conceited little fool of a ratlet said, “I don’t want to hear any of your talk, I tell you to stand still; that’s all I have to say.”

Bye and bye, John Grinner, who had not heard this conversation, but had been feeding and kindling and watering Succotash and wondering how it was he was so unusually leaky, came round to the front and lighted the head lamp, and Tzaskoe ran away.

Then Succotash brightened up and said “Oh! it was a joke of my dear little Tzasky: what an old fool I have been to think that he was so wicked”, but no, the moment John Grinner got up on the cab again, back came Tzaskoe, looking crosser than ever, and took his position on the right hand rail just in front of the cow catcher.

“My dearest pet”, said Succotash, “John Grinner is just ready to touch the throttle valve and when he does, I must move. This is dangerous joking. Do — please move a little further off.”

“I am not in the habit of joking with my friends”, said Tzaskoe, and turned his back.

John Grinner struck the bell and Succotash gasped and whistled and shrieked but Tzaskoe affected to be very much interested with the end of his tail and not to notice anything that was said.

The next minute John Grinner said go!

“It’s all over now”, said Succotash, bursting into tears as he began going.

Tzaskoe instantly felt the rail tremble under him. Up to that moment he had not believed that his big friend would really do his duty but now he was in such an agony of terror that he could not attempt to jump even if there had been time. He crouched down and the cow catcher passed over him but so close that it almost crushed him and forced him down on one side so that before the wheel came up he had all but rolled off.

A scalding hot tear fell from poor Succotash right on the top of his head and the wheel was just in time to take his interesting tail off, right smash up to its roots.

Succotash went on about his business, Tzaskoe fainted.

When he came to he had a terrible head ache and a terrible back ache and was in a high fever. He tried to make his way down to the wharf, so he could cool his head and get a sea-weed poultice for the end of his back but he had the greatest difficulty in keeping his balance and steering the way he wanted to go. First thing he knew he ran almost into the mouth of {a} horrid old terrier. The terrier looked right at him as if he were a curiosity. Tzasko could not think why he did not eat him till he came to the wharf and looked down at his image in the water and did not know himself. Just then he heard some of the wharf ratlets talking, and one of them asked “What sort of an animal is that? It has not any tail and it has not any ears, but it is not a toad because [241] its hairy except a bald spot on its head.” The fact is the tear that Succotash let fall had just scalded his ears and all the hair on the top of his head off.

Tzaskoe when he heard what the other ratlet said knew that the terrier had not suspected that he was of a rat family, and he was so mortified that he dropped himself off into the water wishing that he might be drowned. But his head was too light and he had not strength to hold it under long enough.

So after bobbing up and down till he was frightfully sea sick he was washed ashore. He was very cold and very sick and very, very sore and he said. “What can I do! what can I do! I am too miserable to live and I can’t die, I wonder if my old daddy would know me.”

Early the next morning after Succotash had returned bringing back the wounded Nipyac and Nipyac had been plastered and bandaged up and they had both been washed and put to bed and the round house door closed, a most respectable grave gray old gentleman walked up into the roundhouse through the floor and approaching old Succotash said,

“Sir, will you kindly condescend to let me detain you from your well earned repose for a few brief moments that of your greatness I may ask a favor?”

“Willingly” replied Succotash, “but be brief.”

The grey old Norwegian then stated that he was the unfortunate father of the wretched Tzaskoe. He described the disgusting figure in which Tzaskoe had returned to his home and how he begged to be relieved of his misery. A cat had been decoyed toward him but she only touched him with one claw and turned up her nose. The town had been searched and fortunately a sufficient dose of genuine rats bane found, “but before what is left of my miserable child destroys itself”, said the venerable rat, “he desires me to thank you for your generosity, to acknowledge his own meanness and folly and to ask your forgiveness.”

“Stuff and nonsense”, said old Suc. “Bring my dear little Tzasky to my cab at once. I was an ass to cry and scald his dear little head. As for his tail — that I could not help, he carried the joke too far, that’s all, but I will get John Grinning to make him a new tail and in a week we’ll have him out as bright as ever.”

“Pardon me, noble sir”! replied the stern parent, “my son owes a duty to his family. Your bright example Sir, has at last awakened him to a sense of it. With tail gone, ears gone, scalp gone, he has gained what is more than all the spirit of a rat. In five minutes he will die. And I — and I —

(emotion choked his utterance)

In the presence of this grief Succotash recovered his equanimity. After a pause he said, “and you Sir, you were about to say?”

“I sir, have a favor to ask of you.”

“Of me? too happy I am sure”, said Succotash.

“It is that his poor mother and myself may have passage with you tomorrow to the port of Boston without the bother of tickets.”

“What in the world are you going to do in Boston”?

[242]

“There we shall easily put ourselves on board some shipping by which we can betake ourselves to the land of our fathers. After what has occurred we cannot of course remain on this continent.”

“Of course not — I see. Don’t give yourself the slightest uneasiness. I’ll make it all right with Grinner, If! don’t I’ll burst my head off. But now go and put little Tzasko out of his misery. My love to him.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”