Cousin Frankie Gets Her Due

"Puff, puff, chug, chug, went the little blue engine. 'I think I can--I think I can--I think I can . . .' " Over the mountain at last, with its load of Christmas toys for the children on the other side, the engine puffed happily: " 'I thought I could --I thought I could--I thought I could.' "

For some 40 years, small boys and girls all over the U.S. have enjoyed the triumph of The Little Engine That Could. The tale has appeared in many versions, sold millions of copies--apparently one of those anonymously written classics that are part of a nation's folklore.

First Royalties. Last week the author of The Little Engine was no longer anonymous. Grosset & Dunlap signed a contract with Mrs. Frances M. Ford of Philadelphia, recognizing her as the author of the tale. The recognition came late: Author Ford is looking forward to celebrating her zooth birthday in March. Grosset & Dunlap will publish a new edition of The Little Engine That Could with Mrs. Ford's name on the cover, and she will receive the first royalties she ever got for her famed story.

Behind last week's contract lay a long struggle on the part of Mrs. Ford's friends to get her recognized as author of a story she dashed off some time between 1910 and 1914, then all but forgot. In 1949 Mrs. Ford's cousin, Mrs. Frank S. Chmiel of Tucson, Ariz., began pestering publishers with the claim that "Cousin Frankie" was The Little Engine's creator. A firm that had always credited the story to an ex-teacher named Mabel Bragg looked back in its records to find that Miss Bragg had never claimed to be doing anything more than retelling another author's story. But publishers were reluctant to take sides; they continued to turn out authorless Little Engines. Months of literary detective work convinced Grosset & Dunlap that Mrs. Ford's claim was valid.

Uncle Nat. Author Ford, though appreciative of her cousin's efforts, has always been modest about The Little Engine. She wrote the story while working for a publisher of children's books in Philadelphia, writing advice to parents under the name "Uncle Nat." As she recalls, she wrote the tale in a letter "in answer to some questions about a child who wouldn't try." Years later a friend told her about hearing a wonderful children's story in church. "I just looked at him in amazement," says Cousin Frankie. "It was my Little Engine."

As the years passed, the little engine that refused to give up captured the imagination of two generations. A Boston mother once wrote a publisher to say that her little boy would not eat his breakfast until he learned to say "I think I can"; a university student credited the little engine's example with getting him through exams; a torpedoed sailor in the South Pacific said he owed his life to the story: about to give up his fight against the sea, the sailor kept saying "I think I can."

Frances Ford lives a quiet life in her granddaughter's home, rises at 7:30 every morning, sits up watching television until all hours of the night. Says she: "I'm fine, except for too many birthdays . . . I'm just happy that so many children enjoyed my Little Engine."

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