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 the "three Rs," but was
not. It was, however, comparatively easy to locate a cargo by means of a
flag, and identification seldom failed, as the flags could be varied in
color, shape and size, so as to provide distinction as well as
difference.

Those who remember the busy levee scene, with the flag adornment
referred to, will agree that there was something picturesque as well as
noisy about the old river days, and will be inclined to regret, and
almost deplore, the fact that things are not, from a river man's
standpoint, what they were.

In no country in the world has railroad building been carried on with so
much enterprise as in our native land. Prior to the enormous expenditure
on track building and railroad equipment, advantage had to be taken of