72.—A PATTI RECEPTION THAT SHE DIDN'T RECEIVE.
There was once a glorious reception for Adelina Patti which did not come off as per programme. She was expected to arrive in New York on a certain steamer, and her manager, in order to stir up public interest in her appearance, chartered sixteen huge tugboats. These, covered with bunting, were to range themselves on each side of her vessel as it steamed into the harbor, and by means of their steam whistles and military bands which they were to carry, such a racket was to be raised as to leave no one in doubt that Patti had arrived.
Besides this there was to be a salute of twenty-one guns at Sandy Hook, and the opera chorus was to sing a cantata which Arditi had written for the occasion.
But as luck would have it, owing to the fog, the ocean steamer was not perceived until it had arrived almost at its anchorage. Patti disembarked unobserved and took a cab for her hotel "as happy as though twenty boats had come down the bay to meet me," she said.