“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 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!’