Arrival at Honolulu was plentifully exciting. Naturally every one was on
deck. Captain Bearman set up a sort of preliminary barking through his
splendid whiskers.
Mr. Curry’s press agent, though not conspicuous for creative ingenuity,
had carried out with tolerable success most of the “advance” ideas with
which the impresario had eagerly and patiently supplied him. There
was a throng down to welcome in the band of venturesome troupers. The
newspapers sent their most gifted reporters, and had reserved space on
their front pages for a generous human-interest yarn. A native orchestra
was strumming on the dock. Of course all the songbirds were wild to
debark.
Shore connections established, the reporters descended and tongues were
ardently loosed. Most of the songbirds had a very efficiently developed
sense of publicity. Miss Valentine, the coloratura who could sing up
to F, turned from one to another, talking with elaborate elegance and
conveying the impression that she considered this a very great lark
indeed—something in the nature of a playful interlude between triumphs
of the past (a little yawn and much patting of curls) and radiant
contracts in the future. The comedian told funny stories of life aboard
the _Skipping Goone_, and agreeably noted out of a corner of his eye
that some of them were being reduced to hieroglyphics. One story they all
seized upon was the story of the clerk who had failed to wake up; and
the clerk must be found and interviewed, and somebody even snapped his
picture.
As for the impresario—of course he was made use of to the fullest
advantage. “Like a conquering monarch,” one of the papers next day
proclaimed his arrival; nor was this an exaggeration, for Xenophon Curry
in all his bright habiliments did look like a conquering monarch, and
carried himself like one, too, so proud was he—oh, a very human sort of
conquering monarch: one with a smile such as, in the words of another
paper, “it would be worth walking all the way around Oahu to see.”