From 'Life on the Mississippi': copyright 1883, by James R.
Osgood and Company
Once a day a cheap gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and
another downward from Keokuk. Before these events, the day was glorious
with expectancy; after them, the day was a dead and empty thing. Not
only the boys but the whole village felt this. After all these years I
can picture that old time to myself now, just as it was then: the white
town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's morning; the streets empty,
or pretty nearly so; one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water
Street stores, with their splint-bottomed chairs tilted back against the
wall, chins on breasts, hats slouched over their faces, asleep--with
shingle-shavings enough around to show what broke them down; a sow and a
litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a good business in
watermelon rinds and seeds; two or three lonely little freight piles
scattered about the "levee"; a pile of "skids" on the slope of the
stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard asleep in the shadow
of them; two or three wood flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to
listen to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them; the great
Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi, rolling its
mile-wide tide along, shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the
other side; the "point" above the town and the "point" below, bounding
the river-glimpse and turning it into a sort of sea, and withal a very
still and brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark smoke
appears above one of those remote "points"; instantly a negro drayman,
famous for his quick eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry,
"S-t-e-a-m-boat a-comin'!" and the scene changes! The town drunkard
stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter of drays follows, every
house and store pours out a human contribution, and all in a twinkling
the dead town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, all go
hurrying from many quarters to a common centre, the wharf. Assembled
there, the people fasten their eyes upon the coming boat, as upon a
wonder they are seeing for the first time. And the boat _is_ rather a
handsome sight too. She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has
two tall fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung
between them; a fanciful pilot-house, all glass and "gingerbread,"
perched on top of the "texas" deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are
gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the
boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and
ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying
from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring
bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain stands
by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the
blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys--a husbanded
grandeur created with a bit of pitch-pine just before arriving at a
town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far
out over the port bow, and an envied deck hand stands picturesquely on
the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is
screaming through the gauge-cocks; the captain lifts his hand, a bell
rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to a
foam, and the steamer is at rest. Then such a scramble as there is to
get aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight and to discharge
freight, all at one and the same time; and such a yelling and cursing as
the mates facilitate it all with! Ten minutes later the steamer is under
way again, with no flag on the jack-staff and no black smoke issuing
from the chimneys. After ten more minutes the town is dead again, and
the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more.