The impression that prevails in England that New Zealand is a place where you can’t get anything to drink, is a false one. Of course, some of the cities in the country are under the ban of prohibition, and so are certain portions of Wellington itself: from these you have to cross the street into such territory as lies outside the ban. The railway cars are teetotal. The people here often tell you that they are being over-legislated. And one notable New Zealander told me that what the country most needed was improvement in higher education. The people, he said, did not care for higher education. Their point of view was material. They wouldn’t do things unless there was something to show for it. In Wellington there are four large, long streets full of shops, tall stone buildings, English in character, hotels, banks, etc., with verandahs covering the pavement the whole way, and cars running through them. Outside of these streets, the houses are mostly built of wood, and resemble, as I have already said, those of a Russian provincial town. The prices strike an Englishman as high, and the cost of living in New Zealand is undoubtedly high. The wages are, from our point of view, enormously high. A good chauffeur (I know of a case in point) can get £4 a week, and a house. From the English point of view such wages are very high indeed. The New Zealanders strike me as being much more like English people than the Australians. Of course they have characteristics of their own. One thing is certain--a more friendly, hospitable people does not exist. To go into the matter of their institutions, life, etc., would need a far more prolonged study and stay than I have been able to make, and I have already said, three or four times, that I don’t believe in pronouncing judgments on a country before you know it thoroughly. One of the most interesting people I have met here is a French lady of the highest culture and education, Sœur Marie Joseph, who is at the head of a Home of Compassion for derelict children. She went out to the Crimean War under Florence Nightingale and looked after the wounded on the battlefields that knew nothing of anæsthetics. She told me that sometimes the doctors, after a day of surgical operations, would be drunk with the fumes of the blood. The wounded had to be tied down to be operated on, and sometimes, where this was not practicable, people had to sit on them to hold them down. Sœur Marie Joseph is very fond of New Zealand. She came out, attracted by what she heard of the Maoris, and she knows the Maoris with an intimate thoroughness. She has a great admiration for them; and she gave me many instances of their chivalry and nobility of character. She has seen great changes since she has been in New Zealand. When she first came, she told me, New Zealand was covered with bush--that is to say, with magnificent forests; and the population, then, she says, was like one large family. * * * * *