The Little Engine that Could
The Little Engine that Could, also known as The Pony Engine, is a moralistic children's story that appeared in the United States of America. The book is used to teach children the value of optimism.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
The gist of the tale is that a long train must be pulled over a high mountain. Various larger engines, treated anthropomorphically, are asked to pull the train; for various reasons they refuse. The request is made of a small engine; the other engines mock the engine for trying. But by chugging on with his motto I-think-I-can, the engine succeeds in pulling the train over the mountain.
The best known incarnation of the story is attributed to "Watty Piper," which is a pseudonym used by the publishing company of Platt & Munk. This retelling of the tale appeared in 1930, and the first edition credit Mabel C. Bragg as the original author. Mabel C. Bragg was a teacher in the Boston, Massachusetts area, who never claimed to have originated the story. The most familiar edition of this basic text, with revised illustrations by George and Doris Hauman, appeared in 1954.
But a much briefer, prior version of the tale appeared under the title Thinking One Can in 1906, in Wellsprings for Young People, a Sunday school publication. This version reappeared in a 1910 publication by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Its text goes:
- A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill "I can't; that is too much a pull for me," said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. At last in desperation the train asked the little switch engine to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. "I think I can," puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As is went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."
- Then as it near the top of the grade, that had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly, but still kept saying, "I--think--I--can, I--think--I--can." It reached the top by dint of brave effort and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself, "I thought I could, I thought I could."
- To think of hard things and say, "I can't" is sure to mean "Nothing done." To refuse to be daunted and insist on saying, "I think I can," is to make sure of being able to say triumphantly by and by, "I thought I could, I thought I could."
In the most widely distributed, Platt & Munk version of the story, all of the engines are given genders; the engines that refuse are male, the engine that pulls the train is female. These have been revised in subsequent editions; in some versions all the engines are male, and in more recent versions all are female.
