Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/51

not get through the custom-house and go ashore until two hours later. We hurried to the Grand Hotel, where we had ordered rooms by wireless, paying two dollars for the service. The manager said he had not received the message, therefore had not reserved the rooms. While he was talking, he excused himself to attend to a telephone call. On his return, he said our wireless message had just been telephoned him from the ship. That is the service you get from the much-advertised wireless. Later I met an officer of the ship on the street, and he said I was entitled to a return of my money, but I will never get it; on paying for the service two days ago, I was compelled to sign an agreement not to ask for my money back in case no service was rendered. . . . The manager of the Grand recommended the Royal, which is under the same management. At the Royal we found a woman clerk so polite that we liked the place at once. When she called a boy to show us our rooms, she called him "Buttons." This young man took us up in a primitive elevator, which stuck, and the servants were compelled to pull us out. When we finally reached our rooms, we liked them, and probably we are as well off here as we would have been at the Grand. . . . All the hotels in Auckland, with five unimportant exceptions, are owned by a Jew named Ernest Davis. He owns hotels in other places, and they are all compelled to sell Hancock beer, as Davis also owns the Hancock brewery. One hears a good deal here about the five free hotels of Auckland. Freedom in this case means freedom to sell any beer the manager chooses to buy. In the United States, breweries own saloons, but I have never