“The commercial lifeblood of the city was represented in the activity along the levee. The man who has never made a trip down the Mississippi River in the real steamboat days has lost a page of life that would have contributed to his love of country.

“The big Anchor Line steamers for Grand Tower, Cairo, Memphis, and Vicksburg were scheduled to leave the St. Louis wharf at five p. m., but they rarely got under way before nine or ten. The rules seemed to be to hold the boat as long as there were offerings of freight, and it looked like the shipping clerks in the big wholesale houses on Second and Main Streets didn’t begin to get busy until late in the afternoon. Then wide two-wheeled drays and trucks would clatter down the long rock levee like an army of invasion. It was a lively[Pg 59] sight. Officers would dart helter-skelter, directing teamsters where to go, and saying things anent their tardiness; the teamsters would swear at their mules, and the mates would cuss the roustabouts. Everybody seemed to have a safe target for his wrath, and nobody took offense. It was all a part of the game.

“By and by, long after supper, the last dray of freight would roar across the wharf bridge, an army of black men would seize the stuff almost before the team stopped, the mud valves would growl out great clouds of steam forward to the paddle wheels, and some one aloft—generally the captain—would pull the great bell for the third time. That was the signal to cast off the hawsers and run in the gang plank. Then the big craft, loaded nearly to the water’s edge amidships, would slowly drift out into the river, stern foremost.

“When the line of boats was cleared, a seeming haphazard concert of small bells and baby whistles below, was responded to by long, fierce exhausts, spouting geyser-like from the steam pipes just forward of the wheelhouse. The din of the bells and whistles, which nobody on earth but the engineers could have deciphered, was kept up until the boat had slowly turned around and headed south. The long voyage had begun. Then the negro roustabouts, scattered around on coffee sacks and hemp bales, started their evening musicale:

“‘The boat comes sailin’ ’round de ben’,
Good-by, my lovah, good-by;
She’s loaded down wid wimin an’ men,
Good-by, my lovah, good-by!

By-by, my ba-bee,
By-by, my ba-bee,
Good-by, my lovah, good-by!’

“It was sung to a long, plaintive tune, carrying with it the agony of parting forever. As it rolled out into the darkness, now and then illumined by the red glare from an opened furnace, the black man seemed to have come into his kingdom; a kingdom peopled with weird shapes and enveloped in the mysticism of a dark continent. He was no longer a humdrum hewer of wood and a drawer of water, but a part of the sublimity of the great river. The steady move of the engines, the cascades from the steam pipes, and the pleasant quiver of the boat seemed the natural accompaniment of the negro’s lullaby, and the whole scene was so enchanting that few passengers retired to their staterooms until late in the night.

“The boat swept on past the great Vulcan ironworks, where the blasts showed red against the houses, and gave them the appearance of a town on fire; on past ‘Bloody Island,’ where statesmen met to shoot holes into each other for honor’s sake, and then down the broad water avenue by the mountains of iron the steamer sped, throwing behind great billows that sparkled back the lights from the rear cabin.

“Far down the stream is a light close to the shore. The pilot knows what that means. It is a wild-cat landing, where a freighter awaits with a lot of goods, or some passengers who want to take the boat. In either event somebody has probably been waiting by the riverside some six or eight hours. The pilot pulls a ring in the top of his little house, and the triple whistles above it give the peculiar signal of the line.

“The steamer runs far past the landing, turns labori[Pg 60]ously around under the chiding of the small bells and baby whistles, and forges up to the landing, where the boat is made fast to a tree, and the gangplank runs out, assisted by the rapid-fire comments of the mate. If there was much freight to go on, the place was lighted by burning pine knots in an iron basket placed near the gangplank.