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 that if we wanted a hot grill or cup of tea or anything, it would be a pleasure to get it for us. The hotel was full, but the kind landlady, Mrs. Parsons, vacated her own room for us, and made us as comfortable as if we had been at home. Nor is this by any means an unusual experience in New Zealand—at Oram's, in Auckland; at McRae's, in Wairoa; at the Criterion, in Napier; here at the Rutland, in Wanganui; and, most notably of all, at Mœller's Occidental Hotel, in Wellington; at Warner's, in Christchurch; and the Grand, at Dunedin, we found a civility and attention, a readiness to oblige, and a disposition to forestall one's most trivial wants, which, alas!—and I say it deliberately—are sadly absent in hotels on the Sydney side, with only a few honourable exceptions.

The domestics certainly seem more willing, and whether it be the climate, or better system, or what, I know not, but they are decidedly less lazy than the usual Phyllises and Ganymedes, to whose tender mercies travellers owe so mighty little of comfort or pleasure, in New South Wales.

While on this subject, it is a real pleasure to testify to the good hotel management we have experienced so far in New Zealand. Take, for instance, the bedrooms. It is the rule, not the exception, in bush "pubs" and country inns on the Sydney side, to find a filthy deposit of dirt, organic matter, and other abominations in your ewer and water-jug. The ewer is seldom