The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-24

SoAoIeus ESEuSeeS DrlnS to the lanQlnS their horses, among which are speci- mems fully as decrepit as their cabins sometimes are. It seems as if one blast rom the steamboat whistle would make these wabbly equine ruins fall to make these wabbly equine ruins fall to pieces, as it does frighten them into staggers, poor beasts. In some cases they have sent their livestock to neigh bors on higher, or at least safer, ground
 Up the slippery yellow slope of the levee bank, as the steamboat gently edges in, the pilot careful not to set the waves rolling against those fragile banks, comes riding black Lockinvar with his bride seated behind him on a spanking mule. The water is within two inches of the top of the levee where his little farm lies, and it has been raining all day. Tomorrow there may be ten feet of water there. They couldn't spend another night of terror, so here they are, going up to Memphis to stay with friends until the worst is over. Lochinvar's young wife wears a gray tailor-made gown of the latest fashion and hat of the same cloth to. match. He had married a town girl. When the river rose so high that she had to look up in the sky to see the black smokestacks of the boats going by she got frightened, and later, when a courier riding down the bottoms brought the news that the workers were piling sand bags on top of the le- wees ten miles above, but that it looked "moughty shaky,'' they fled to the near est landing. Behind them came four horse team with two families in the wagon behind, and along the canal of mud that composed the road between the cotton fields could be seen other wagons hurrying. Like the. ark wait ing for it's cargo, the steamer hangs with the tip of her nose on the levee until all are got aboard. If. the animals who had never seen an ark were any more refractory than these wild mules and horses from the backwoods who have never seen steamboat, it would have taken Noah many weeks to load up. It made the beholder yearn for a derrick which should calmly, quietly and gently lift each particular horse in the midst of it's contortions and deposit it on the boat, To look upon the vast ed frames and -lustreless eyes of many of these four-legged toilers in the fields it was hard to see how they could have within them the fire to stand on their hind legs like circus performers, wrest themselves loose from their harness, which was none too fawless, back, buck, balk and break away from their drivers. It was only when black hu- manity from the boat settled upon the struggling mass like ants upon an ath- lecfe beetle, with two pulling each horse, two whipping and pushing, and as many as could lay hold on the wheels, all shouting, that the embar- kation was made.
 While the rain poured down all day, towards evening pillows of mist arose from the surface of the water until our boat seemed to be gliding on clouds. They rose all around us. but only half way up the sides of the boat and if we had been in an airship riding a mile above the earth the effect might have been something like this: Not a glin- mer of the water was visible: to the right and left and in front we ploughed through a fog ten feet high and no higher. Whlte-limbed sycan1ores stood up on the banks like skeletons; some times wearing hundreds of punches of nistletoes as if birds had built great nests in their branches. Threading ba- yous that in most times would scarcely carry steam launch. we crashed among the branches. taking in truth a trip overland. We could pull the cat tails from the willows, and cut switches from the cottonwoods. There was no land in sight. It was world of vapors and ragged tree-tops. with grap, dripping Armament overhead. a color less, sodden deso!ation, silent except fo the churning of CUT engines. For a width of twelve miles in some stretches of the river the water plashes and "ip- pies among the undergrowth where 1t grows shallow, made melodious by the concert of millions of frogs. It is their jubilee. The world was made for frogs, it is quite certain to them, when they see no place for man for score of miles; and even aftcr the ovefh.w O. the river at last fi,t Is a place where 1t must cease its encrr icL n.nis. there are still outlying DO his and sloughs far spreading beyond these pools, and yet the puddles of Ultima Thule, all inhab- ited by the vocal ra3a Sa'ec shngStrrs
 Memphis stands ,n her mighty hi! and lcoks away across a watery waste in every direction. The reason Mem- phis is where it is Is because it could not have been anywhere else. It is more lofty than St. Louis. From the top of it's mountain it can look into far countries on clear days, and on cloudy ones 1t can at least descry the pool room which stands on pegs in the midst of the waters across the river and to which hundreds of Memphians make daily pilgrimages each day by steamer. In normal seasons this pool-room, built fo yellow pine and gleaming like fools gold, as pool-rooms may be excused for gleaming, is on dry land; but the cir constance that the waves from passing steamers slap and slosh under it's floors does not hinder it's business. By some unexplained peculiarity when one state prohibits pool-rooms the adjoining state doesn't, so that every city near the di- viding line merely starts up one across the border A man will travel far for his pet amusement, especially if there is law against it. Now that the flood