Peter had known this odor in the press-room of Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods.

Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a roustabout instead.

Then he spoke of the hour of burial, and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any moment.

Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts.

Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.

The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the cold wind.

" Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout.

The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and underlings of our strange black American world.

Peter and Cissie were not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts.

There were then no organizations giving performances of such order as are now given by several colored companies; that was because no manager could imagine that audiences would pay to see Negro performers in any other role than that of Mississippi River roustabouts; but there was lots of talent and ambition.

If there are any foreigners the average British roustabout hates it is French gendarmes, and the ruffians were of a mind to "beat them up."

The riot became general, the roustabouts heaving iron bars, pieces of wood, and anything they could find.

The stevedores and roustabouts of the waterfront made ballads of happenings as their forefathers had chants of the fierce adventures of their constant warfare.

Should anyone in the twentieth century wish to see the old-fashioned prime negro at his best, let him take a Mississippi steamboat and watch the roustabouts at workthose chaffing and chattering, singing and swinging, lusty and willing freight handlers, whom a river captain plying out of New Orleans has called the noblest black men that God ever made.

Furthermore, A. de Puy Van Buren, noted as a common sight in the Yazoo district, "especially in the ditching season, wandering 'exiles of Erin,' straggling along the road"; and remarked also that the Irish were the chief element among the straining roustabouts, on the steamboats of that day.

And the roustabout throwing the rope from the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank!

And the dangling roustabouts hanging like drops of water from itdropping sometimes twenty feet to the land, and not infrequently into the river itself.

It was too early yet for any but roustabouts, marketers, and church-goers; so early that even the river was still partly mist-covered; only in places could the swift, dark current be seen rolling swiftly along.

The roustabout dived, as the roustabouts always do, after the drowning, even at the risk of their good-for-nothing lives.

The roustabout dived, as the roustabouts always do, after the drowning, even at the risk of their good-for-nothing lives.

I was a roustabout and freight picker.

They used to kick the roustabouts about and run them around but they never laid the weight of their hands on him.

This does not mean that Washington cursed his negroes as the mate of a Mississippi River boat does his roustabouts, but I suspect that those who have heard such a mate can form an idea of the tone employed by our Farmer that so shocked Parkinson.

The first to become widely known was "The Bully," a levee song which had been long used by roustabouts along the Mississippi.

" After a few moments' deep thought: "Say, ma, then don't you think they'd be lots more surprised if you did take us all?" SWIMMERS Two negro roustabouts at New Orleans were continually bragging about their ability as long distance swimmers and a steamboat man got up a match.