time, we are threatened with so complete a revolution in travel
and motive power as to warrant a prediction that, long before another
quarter of a century has passed, electricity will take the place of
steam almost entirely. But even if this is so, old acquaintance should
not be forgot, and every citizen of the United States should feel that
the prosperity of the country is due, in very large measure, to the
country's magnificent waterways, and to the enterprise of the men who
equipped river fleets and operated them, with varying degrees of profit.

The true river man is not so conspicuous as he was in the days when St.
Louis, Cincinnati, Memphis and other important railroad centers of
to-day were exclusively river towns. The river man was a king in those
days. The captain walked the streets with as much dignity as he walked
his own deck, and he was pointed to by landsmen as a person of dignity
and repute. The mate was a great man in the estimation of all who knew
him, and of a good many who did not know him. Ruling his crew with a rod
of iron, and accustomed to be obeyed with considerable and commendable
promptness, he adopted a tone of voice in general conversation
considerably louder than the average, and every one acquired a habit of
making way for him.

The levee in a river town, before the railroads came snorting and
puffing across country and interfering with the monopoly so long enjoyed
by the steamboat, was a scene of continuous turmoil and activity.
Sometimes, now, one sees on a levee a great deal of hurrying and noise.
But the busiest scenes of to-day sink into insignificance compared with
those which are rapidly becoming little more than an indistinct memory.
The immense cargoes of freight of every description would be ranged
along the river front, and little flags could be seen in every
direction.

These flags were not, perhaps, exactly evidence of the activity of the
schoolmaster, or of the prevalence of superior education. They were,
rather, reminders of the fact that a great majority of the rank and file
of river workers could read little, and write less. To tell a colored
roustabout twenty or thirty years ago to fetch a certain cargo, labeled
with the name of a particular boat or consignee, would have been to draw
from the individual addressed a genuine old-time plantation grin, with
some caustic observation about lack of school facilities in the days
when the roustabout ought to have been studying th