The pier of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, at Hoboken, fairly sizzled with bustle and excitement.

The Kaiser Wilhelm had arrived at Sandy Hook the previous evening and was now lying out in midstream.

She would tie up at her dock within half an hour.
Employes of the line, baggage masters, newspaper reporters, Custom House officers, policemen, detectives, truck drivers, expressmen, longshoremen, telegraph messengers and anxious friends of incoming passengers surged back and forth in seemingly hopeless confusion.
The shouting of orders, the rattling of cab wheels, the shrieking of whistles was deafening.

From out in the river came the deep toned blasts of the steamer's siren, in grotesque contrast with the strident tooting of a dozen diminutive tugs which, puffing and snorting, were slowly but surely coaxing the leviathan into her berth alongside the dock.

The great vessel, spick and span after a coat of fresh paint hurriedly put on during the last day of the voyage, bore no traces of gale, fog and stormy seas through which she had passed on her 3,000 mile run across the ocean.