THE PREMIER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1407, 18 March 1905, Page 2

THE PREMIER.

The Premier l'e apparently wearing down the symptoms of revolt in Auckland, Zamiol writes in the Star : —I remember, years ago, that a rather irroveront undergraduate at a Southern university college composed a *• Commemoration ” song to .the air of one of the beet things in “ San Toy,” dealing with the personal” characteristics of the Hon. R. J. Seddon, P.C., and the part of it that I remember best is the line, “We never get tired of Richard John No, never.” I used to think that was satire, but somehow when he comes aloDg once more, and you see him in the flesh, and observe the hold he has upon everybody be meets, you begin to believe it is literally true. I wasn’t at the Premier Picnic the other-day, but a man who was there —by no means a Liberal, or a democrat, or a Seddonite— ioid me that he had just begun to understand why “ the old man ” held his ground so well, while other politicans come and go. To see him shaking hands with the men, and joking I with tho women, and patting the. children j on the head, was quite enough to inspire j my friend—a somewhat cynical and perhaps rather blase man of the world—with a genuine belief in Mr Seddon’s heart, whatever he may have thought of his head or his politics. Everywhere in the colony you can hoar the esme story, from all sorts and cohdit-ionß of people. I have known a member of the Opposition, who had the best of reasons for detesting the Premier,

after a long tirade against the iniquities of Seddonism, stop short aod say, in a rather deprecating fashion, “All the same, I think he's the best man in the House.”

That is it. Even to the people who denounce him ns a demagogue or a humbug, he is. a large-sized Mar, with a capital initial. There is always something about him—his good humor and his heartiness, and hie kindliness and his courage, and his courage, and his freedom of speech—that appeals to everyone he meets, and what-

ever people may say about his political ability or his principles, bis heart seems to me to be getting bigger as he grows older. 1 must admit that I have been prejudiced in his favor ever sioce I heard the settlers and miners round Kumara and Dillmanstown singing the praises of “Dick ” twenty years ago. But you don’t need to go so far as tho West Coast to find out that bb a man “ Bichard John ” fills a j big space on) the horizon of everybody ho meets—Liberal or Conservative, brewer or probibitioniet, man, woman, or child. May I his shadow never grow lese! "