Waterbury Democrat., 1902-04-24
MIKE, THE MASCOT.
q bring in 5 and take out 2

IllS sounded like arithmetic, put lI wasn't. It was just business, railroad business, pertaining to the very busy life of Henry McCarthy, who for 2S years has pulled the lever on engines that have pulled great trains toward Kansas City sometimes and toward Denver at others, over the old Kansas Pacific, or Union Pacific, as 1t is now known.
 l The numbers he mentioned referred to the numbers of the trains-5 and 2. His engine, Mccarthy said, is 1474, | and better one of the kind,' he added in the phraseology of My Uncle Toby you wouldn't find in a dozen years''
 Mccarthy was an engineer before he came to Colorado in 1873 and he has been an engineer ever since. barring three years when he was in the sheep business in Lincoln county-a disas- ! trous three years ending in total loss TOT l,OO0 sheep, which gave up the ghost under the asphyxiating force of 1 a waterspout.
 "And that's the way went out of i the sheep business and back to rail- roading''
 But MT Mccarthy Is q modest man. if his hair Is short on top, and doesn't l talk unless he is drawn out. There are those who can draw him out. how ever, and one of those got at him the ] other night and touched the right l spring.
 ''No. Pm not superstitious, he be- gan, as they all begin, when they are asked if they have any haunting Ideas. but 1 don't mind telling you of a curious thing which happened to me back east when I used to work a throttle on the Fort Wayne road.
 "A little bird lit on the pilot of my l engine one day as we were passing through Kokomo, Ind. Some crumbs of bread or something that had been left on the small platform by some body attracted its attention. It picked and picked at the crumbs till we had travelled twenty miles further to Peru. Ind. There it finished it's meal and flew away I didn't think any more about the circumstance till the next day, when on my return through Peru l again noticed this small brown bird. It fiuttered about the pilot for a mo ment and seemed to miss something. Realizing at once that this was the same little bird which had travelled with me on the previous day, at once unpacked my lunch box and threw some crumbs out on one of the run ming boards.
 ''The bird caught on at once He was an awfully cute little fellow and | began to pick at the dinner I had thrown out to him. He rode back with me to Kokomo and there desert ed me. The next time I came through he was waiting for me. and I had his breakfast ready for him, all spread | out
 Well. sir. that little fellow rode with me for two years. I took a great interest in him, and he got so tame he would come right up into the cab and eat lunch with me. in quired and found that Mike as we called him. was one of the despised English sparrows, but we didn't despise him; we thought the world of him-Joe Hennessey, my fireman, and | I.
 l "NVe didn't know that a crusade was on against the sparrows or we would have looked out better for Mike, but one day when we came through Kokomo Mike missed his train. It was the first time he had missed it since we had made his ac- quaintance and we worried about him throughout whole run. When we got back to Kokomo on the return trip we learned that there had been q great slaughter of spalrows, and we knew little Mike had been one of the victims.
 Well it just knocked us out. We had learned to love the pert little rascal. and we mourned for him as if he had been some close friend or rela- ton. And, strange as it may seem, things began to go wrong right away. A draw-head went out almost every day for week, and one of the driving rods snapped off and nearly ended us both, the second trip we made with out our mascot
 s'Then poor Joe suddenly sickened and died, and 1 had a green cub in withme who got me into trouble every day, and then I had q narrow escape from running into q work train, and lwell, I quit and came to Colorado. I thought I'd better do it before some thing serious happened.''
 '"Then you attribute your good luck to the presence of Aike?"
 "No-o-o, I can't say l do,'' said MT Mccarthy. .I'n not superstitious, you know. but did feel awful safe when Mike was along.