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"Aside from the management the personnel of a circus naturally divides itself into three groups: the ring performers, the animal trainers, and the roustabouts. The first named, consisting of acrobats, tumblers, jugglers, aerial artists, and equestrians, are an exclusive class that eat at the same table and use the same Pullmans. They are not 'snooty, just reserved.
The trainman roared, which once more aroused the ire of the roustabouts who were trying to sleep. They had gone on for an hour, when finally the train slowed down. "Here's where you hit the ties," advised the brakeman, peering ahead. "Where are we?" "McQueen's siding. We stop here to let an express by. And I want to tell you that it won't be healthy for you if I catch you on this train again.
On the double row of flaggings leading up to the summit of the bank, were two ant-like processions of Kentucky folk one, leisurely climbing townward with their bags and bundles, the other hurrying down with theirs to the boat, which was ringing its bell, blowing off steam, and in other ways creating an uproar which seemed to turn the heads of the negro roustabouts and draymen, who bustled around with a great chatter and much false motion.
Apparently, all the negro cooks, teamsters, officers' servants, and roustabouts from the adjoining camps had been gathered there, with Groundhog, Pilgarlic, and similar specimens of the white teamsters among them and leading them. Seated on a log were three negroes, one sawing on an old fiddle, one picking a banjo, and one playing the bones.
Most of the night is spent in sitting on deck and watching the Persian roustabouts carry the cargo aboard, for the shouting, the inevitable noisy squabbling, and the thud of bales dumped into the hold render sleep out of the question. The steamer starts at sunrise, and the captain comes round to pay his respects.
It was a busy scene on board negro roustabouts shipping the gang-plank, and singing in a low pitch an old-time plantation melody; stokers, stripped to the waist, shoveling coal into the gaping furnaces; chambermaids hanging the ship's linen out to dry; passengers crowded by the shore rail, on the main deck; the bustling mate shouting orders, apparently for the benefit of landsmen, for no one on board appeared to heed him; and high up, in front of the pilot-house, the spruce captain, in gold-laced cap, and glass in hand, as immovable as the Sphinx.
Then the companies they represent will make us an offer and probably skin us alive. In the meantime we'll be having all kinds of trouble with Jerkline Jo and her bunch of roustabouts." "Well, then, we'll settle all that later," Lucy retorted. "Your first move is to go for Hank and get a toehold, as Tweet says. Don't borrow trouble!
"Yes," said Sylvia, in a low voice. "I say eight out of ten. Estimates would differ. Some doctors would say seven out of ten and some actual investigations have shown nine out of ten. And understand me, I don't mean bar-room loafers and roustabouts. I mean your brothers, if you have any, your cousins, your best friends, the men who came to make love to you, and whom you thought of marrying.
Dat nigger is no good any more!" shouted the alarmed roustabouts. The mate lifted him up, and he began bleeding from the nose, eyes, and ears. The mate kindly asked him if he wanted to butt any more. He did not reply, only shook his head sadly and murmured inaudibly, "No." They applied whisky and water to his head, and at last removed him into the deck to cool off.
I saw the levees piled with merchandise, and a score or more of packets rushing fresh cargoes ashore mates bawling commands down the gangplanks where the roustabouts came and went at a trot. Gold-mad hundreds thronged the wagon-rutted streets of this raw little village, the commercial center of a vast new empire.
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