would do no discredit to Oxford Street or the Strand,
either as respects their size or the goods displayed in them.

Some distance up Queen Street, and turning a little out of it, is the
Market House, where a very fine show of fruit, vegetables, and other
eatables is frequently to be seen; and then there is the United Service
Hotel, at the corner of Wellesley Street, which is a structure that
Aucklanders point to with pride, as evidence of their progress in street
architecture. At night, when the gas is lit in the streets, the shops,
and the saloons, and one mingles with the crowd that throngs them, or
pours into the theatre, the Choral Hall, the Mechanics' Institute, the
Oddfellows' Hall, or other places of amusement, instruction, or
dissipation, it is almost possible sometimes to imagine oneself back in
the old country, in the streets of some English town.

New-chums are able to notice some of the peculiarities of Auckland
street-life, wherein it most differs from an old-country town. These
arise principally from that absence of conventionality, which, certainly
in many external things, is the prerogative of colonists. There is a
mingling of people who seem on terms of perfect equality, and who yet
present the most extraordinary difference in appearance. The gentleman
and the roughest of roughs may happen to get together on the same piece
of work, and when their temporary chum-ship ends the one cannot entirely
cut the other, such being a course quite inadmissible with colonial
views of life. Only one man _may_ be scouted by any one, and that is the
loafer.

Of course there are good people here who would fain introduce all the
class barriers that exist in the old country; but they cannot do more
than form little cliques and coteries, which are constantly giving way
and being broken down under the amalgamating process of colonization.
Where these offer most resistance to the levelling influence is where
they are cemented by religious denominational spite, which is,
unhappily, very prevalent in Auckland.

This general fusion of all sorts of people together produces a very
amiable and friendly state of things. Etiquette is resolved into simple
courtesy, not very refined, perhaps, but which is sufficient "between
man and man," as Micawber would say. Prejudice must not be entertained
against any man on account of his birth, connections, education,
poverty, or manner of work; he is "a man for a' that," and entitled to
t