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Observer, Volume XXXV, Issue 49, 14 August 1915, Page 20

Mr E. M. Page, who has for so long been manager of the Waverley Hotel, is. leaving this city at the end of the week for Wellington. Mr Page will become proprietor of the Grand Hotel in Willis Street, a house with a high reputatiom and on© of the best appointed and modern hotels in New Zealand. Mr Page is as well known, in Wellington as ■in Auckland! and is likely to make an ideal licensee of the opulent hotel l . . ® "' ss> ® A modern hotel doesn't much care wlio keeps it> and you never know that a policeman, a parson or a scientist won't finish up a millionaire licensed victualler. An esteemed son of the soil, known wherever the great New Zealand language is spoken, not long since assumed the right and title to a country hotel. He veiled his unacquaintance with the finer points: of the great philanthropic business with considerable deftness, and spent some time with his sixth standard son learning the hard words on the bottles'. A group of customers entered, and, lying fondly up against the bar, nominated their medicine. Three of them named simple daily poisons, but the fourth, having dined, declared 1 in a rich fruity voice for "Benedictine." The licensee scanned the shelves. "I don't keep it," he said, "have a long beer!" "But there's the bottle!" said the customer, pointing to it. "Ah, so 'tis!" declared the triumphant? licensee. "Will ye have lemonade or sody wather wid it?" •