About This Scene:

St Louis, Missouri

"The first steamboat arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 2, 1817. It was a small vessel with a little engine, and the crew often had to use poles to help move it along. By the 1830s, more powerful steamboats carried cargo and passengers up and down the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. By 1908, however, train lines extended all along these rivers, and the steamboat era was fading away. Among the passengers boarding with Adèle, Simon, and Aunt Cécile are Joseph Pulitzer, Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), Scott Joplin, Marianne Moore, T. S. Eliot, and a young Al Hirschfeld." — from Adèle & Simon in America