They had to send far up town, and to several different places before they finally got it, so they said.

We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes.

The same thing had occurred the evening before, at the hotel.

I think I have divined the reason for this state of things at last.

The English know how to travel comfortably, and they carry soap with them; other foreigners do not use the article.
At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the last moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it in the bill along with the candles and other nonsense.