Harper's Young People, October 24, 1882 An Illustrated Weekly

CARBO: HIS STORY.

BY SHERWOOD RYSE.

One raw, disagreeable night last spring I was set down by a local train at a little junction on a Western railroad to wait for the eastward-bound express. The dépôt house was a little place lighted by an oil lamp which gave out a choking smell, and heated by a big stove that devoured every breath of fresh air that found its way into the close room.

Turning away from it, I began pacing the platform in order to keep warm, and had passed an engine that was taking a rest on a side track, but panting heavily all the time, when, as I came back, I thought I saw a queer little face at the window of the cab. I stopped, and the queer little face again showed itself. It was, without doubt, a monkey. As I stopped and made signs to him he began to chatter and to rap on the glass with his fingers, and the next moment the engineer's face appeared above his.

"You have a strange passenger there," said I.

"Well, yes, p'r'aps so," replied the engineer, and he picked up a lighted lantern and threw the light upon my face. "Yes, it may seem queer to strangers," he went on, "but it's natural to me now. We've travelled many a hundred miles together. Eh, Carbo?" addressing his companion.

"I think there must be a story connected with that monkey," I said. "Would you mind telling it to me if there is?"

"Are you waiting for the express?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, come up into the cab. It's warm in here. Carbo, you selfish rascal, give up that seat to the stranger. There, there, I know you're fond of me," he added, "but you needn't keep on kissing me.

"Well, sir, it's wonderful the intelligence of these monkeys. When I first knew Carbo he was in the coal business, and that's why I call him Carbo. Yes, you may laugh, but it's a fact. He had a coal-yard right at the dépôt at K----, a little junction where every train but two expresses a day has to stop. He wasn't the proprietor of that yard. He was a salaried employé, like what merchants call a 'buyer.' He bought the coal, and the chap that owned the yard sold it again at a big profit--at least I guess he must have sold some of it."

"And pray what sort of money did Carbo pay for it?" I asked.

"Antics, sir," replied the engineer, disengaging Carbo's fingers from his beard, which the attentive little fellow was carefully combing; "antics, sir, and pranks. This was the how of it: Carbo lived, as I say, with a man that owned a little house and yard right where the engines mostly stopped at K---- Junction. Coal was dear that winter, and so this man lighted on a dodge to make Carbo keep him in coal free of all expense.

"He set up a pole, in the middle of his yard, twenty feet high, and on top of it he set a little platform with a little roof over it, and on that platform he tied this here monkey. Well, sir, that man knew human nature well, for he reckoned that not an engine would stop there but the engineer and his mate would have a shot with a chunk of coal at that chattering monkey on the pole, and every chunk would fall into his yard. And I guess the old man--he wasn't so old either, but he was a dry kind of a chap as always had a sly grin on his face, as if he was chuckling at the way we boys slinged good coal into his yard--I guess he reckoned aright. Many's the time when I've chucked half a dozen lumps of coal at this little chap, never thinking how I was a-feeding the old man's stove with the company's coal. I reckon Carbo must have made as much as two hundred-weight of coal a week. It seems a heap to give away, but, bless you! I never guessed that any other engineer but me ever threw coal at that monkey. But I thought a good deal of it afterward, and I made up my mind that every one of 'em did, and their mates too--such is human nature. Not that we wanted to hurt the little beast, but he was such a good mark, though I never heard that any one ever hit him, he was so quick."

"Well, sir," I said, as the engineer paused to light his pipe, "that is the best true monkey story I've heard yet, and I guess it is true. But how did you come to get him? I should think he would have been too valuable to be parted with."

"There's a story to that, too, Colonel," he replied. "It was a year ago, just about this time, that the family that Carbo lived with got burned out one windy night. P'r'aps they'd been using coal too free, seeing as they came by it so easy. Anyway, I came up one morning on my engine, and there the little house and the cow-shed and the little corn-crib was all a heap of smoking ashes. It had caught fire in the night, and burned down in twenty minutes, so the neighbors said. The poor old man was so badly burned trying to get his cow out of the shed that he died inside of two days; and his wife and daughters escaped in their night clothes, but that was all they had. The neighbors took them in, but everything they owned, except a few acres of run-down land, was burned up.

"Of course it got talked of along the line, and by-and-by it came out that every engineer and fireman as come along had chucked chunks of coal at that monkey on his pole. Well, the agent at K---- was a kind-hearted chap, and no fool either, and he thought he'd get up a benefit to help the poor old woman. So he had a handbill printed, telling how the family had been burned out, and the old man killed, and how that all they had left was a pet monkey. Then it went on to say that the monkey would be raffled for at two dollars a share, and called upon every engineer and fireman who had thrown the company's coal at the monkey to take a share for the benefit of the widow and orphans.

"Well, sir, that handbill was circulated all along the line, and the boys came to think how they'd been throwing away the company's coal (for the neighbors told the whole story when the old man was dead), and they felt mean. Then the company refused to take any shares when it was brought to their notice, so the boys thought they'd make it right with their consciences by buying a share with what they owed the company for coal they'd thrown at the monkey.

"And so, as every train came up after pay-day, the boys handed in two dollars apiece without a growl, and some of us took two shares apiece. Then the handbill had got into the cars, and some of the passengers who read the story bought shares; and so, when it came to be footed up, the value of this little chap here was found to be five hundred dollars, all paid up.

"Well, sir, we appointed a committee to conduct the raffle, and one night I got a dispatch from Perkins, the dépôt agent at K----, saying: 'Monkey is yours. Will you take twenty dollars for him?' I wired back: 'No, nor two hundred. Keep him until I come up with No. 12.' So next day I got him. You see, I'd been thinking a deal about this monkey, and now I'd won him I thought he'd keep me in luck. Well, I've had him nigh on to a year now, and I wouldn't part with him for as much money as he brought the widow."

"I don't wonder at that," I said; "and he seems very fond of you, too. But what became of the widow and orphans?"

"Oh, she's done finely. She bought out a small grocery, and she got so well known, owing to her misfortune, that all the folks came to trade with her. I drop in on her sometimes when I have to lay over for an hour or two, and she always asks after Jocko, as she calls him; but it's such a common monkey name that I called him Carbo, which means something; and then she mostly cries a little, thinking of the old man. I don't know as she thinks Carbo brought her much luck altogether, but he kept the family in coal for a whole winter--no one would ever have thought of throwing at a dog, even on top of a pole--and he brought five hundred dollars that saved 'em from the poor-house.

"But here's the express signaled, so I guess you'd better get down. I've told that story a hundred times, I reckon, and I'm 'most tired of telling it; but I saw you was a stranger in these parts, so I didn't mind telling it to you. Good-night to you, sir, and a pleasant journey!"

A ROLL OF HONOR.

BY G. T. LANIGAN.

Our young readers are already familiar with the stories of Kate Shelley, Edith Baxter, and the young hero of the Wardley coal mine, which have been told within a short time in YOUNG PEOPLE. Here are some other names that may be added to this noble list.

Every year, on the occasion of the national fêtes, the Belgian government makes a public distribution of rewards to persons who have displayed remarkable courage in a good cause. At the last festival at Brussels the Home Minister pinned a medal on the breast of a little boy of nine, whom he rightly called "a young hero." Genin, while playing in a field near the Sambre, had seen a little girl fall into the river, and jumping in after her, saved her, with much difficulty, and then found that it was his little sister that he had rescued. She had been playing on the river's edge against their parents' strict command, and to save her from punishment he took the blame of her disobedience on himself, and received a severe beating like a little Spartan. His sister, however, could not bear to see him suffer, and told the truth; and the story being confirmed by the evidence of an eye-witness, little Genin was sent for to Brussels, and decorated amid the cheers of a hundred thousand people.

Charles Mahony was a boy of twelve, who was playing on the banks of the Aire, in May last, with his two brothers, aged five and two, when they fell into the stream, swollen with the spring floods. Charles plunged in and brought the younger child to shore, and then swam for the elder one, who was drowning in the middle of the torrent, but the current was too powerful and the water too cold, and though he reached him, it was only to sink with him.

At Ashton-under-Lyne, Edward Wilcox, a peasant boy of fourteen, heard one night not long ago cries of distress from a canal near the house where he lived, and running out found a woman drowning, while two men were looking on, terrified and incapable of aiding her. Jumping into the water, he seized her as she was sinking, and brought her ashore and placed her in the warm bed he had just left, until he could run off for assistance. He thus earned the medal given him by the Humane Society.

During the holiday season two American girls have shown how useful an accomplishment swimming is. One was Fannie Coman, of Harlem, a slim blue-eyed girl of fourteen, who, when a little girl fell from the wharf into the river where both current and tide were strong, called to those on shore to come to her help, and diving into the stream, brought the child up and placed her in a boat moored off the wharf, and then swam off to recover her slipper. The second was Emma Hamilton, a girl of fifteen, living at Northport, Long Island, who made a gallant though fruitless effort to save her cousin when he was seized with a cramp while bathing, and at last recovered his body.

Two other heroes, the youngest of all, remain to be mentioned. One was a five-year-old boy at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, named Carey, who, when a playmate fell into the water, held him up by the hair till assistance reached them. The other was the elder of two very young brothers who broke through the ice while skating at Cincinnati, and were clinging desperately to the slippery floes while the rescuers were toiling to reach them. "Be sure you take Willie out first!" were the only words the elder brother said; but before assistance came the little fellows sank together in the icy water.