bales and load them into drays. Some of them worked singing, as
sailors do when they haul and pull.

Sometimes the captains of the larger steamboats would issue
invitations to the families for a soiree, when the excitement would
fill society for days. The ladies would dress in their silks and laces
and the men spruce up in their frock coats and flowered waistcoats and
cross the gang plank into the kerosene-lighted steamboats and dance until
morning. Those were red letter days for Jefferson. As a matter of
etiquette, when the steamboat was loaded and about to start back,
everybody would be at the levee to wave good-bye. The side paddle would
turn and the hospitable captain would be up in the pilot house, waving
his cap in return until the churning side-wheel carried him around the
bend.

New houses were dotting the town here and there, some of them
large and handsome with spacious grounds. Kerosene oil lamps were put
up to light the streets and an "Opera House" was built, where many a
stock company came to play in tragedy or comedy. Shakespeare's plays
were the favorites of the community and Jaffray and Renestine went
often to the theatre, accompanied by their two daughters, who were in
their advanced school-day years and able to appreciate it. There were
two little sons added to their family circle; they remained asleep in
their trundle beds with old Aunt Caroline watching over them, as she
had watched over the little daughters. Josiah had died right after the
war was over, but he lived to see his people freed and schools opened
where they could be taught to read and write--a precious privilege. He
had said to Aunt Caroline just before his last illness: "Thanks be to
God that He has set the colored folks free, but thanks be to Him mosen
for gibbin' me a good marsa and missus who gibs me my close, my vittles