Mr Maxwell

Manawatu Herald, 25 January 1894, Page 2

Mr Maxwell

And so Mr Richard Seddon has worked his will at last, and has got rid of his bete noire, Mr Maxwell, the Railway Commissioner. Let us at least give Richard credit for persistence, if even in the very worst of causes. Mr Maxwell is, thanks to Mr Seddon, one of the most disliked men in the colony, by those who don't know him. Mr Maxwell is a man who never would be loved in a country like this. He is a person with a backbone. He forms an idea for himself of what is his duty and then proceeds to do his duty, calmly, quietly, without fuss and without fear or favor. He is one of those hateful persons who will lick no man's boots, whether a Seddon's or a shunter's. In fact he is a man. Hence these tears! I don't know Mr Maxwell personally. I only met him once in my life, and then on business. Like a large number of other people, I had imbibed the idea that he was a cold-blooded, haughtymannered autocrat, I was deputed by the management of a certain newspaper to interview this Czar in the interests of certain farmers who desired their produce carried at a rate cheaper than that ruling. I was supplied with certain " facts " and instructions not to permit the autocrat Maxwell to jump on me. I was astounded, and perhaps a little disgusted — for I had gone armed, as I thought, at all poms—t o find there was no jump in Manwell whatever. He was more than civil ; he was sublimely amiable. He proceeded at once to business. He took ray " facts," and, in the nicest manner in the world, knocked the bottom out of them in two minutes. He showed conclusively that neither I nor those who had instructed me knew the rudiments, of the particular matter on which we professed to be authorities. He then proceeded to tell me a lot of things I didn't know He was never angry, never anything but kind and considerate ; but he wa3 a little tired, because I was probably about the sixty-ninth pain« ful ass who had interviewed him that morning, and who, knowing rather less about railway matters than about the integral calculus or

perpetual motion, but tried to (each a railway expert his business Maxwell forgave me for being an ass, but it took a long time before I could forgive him for finding out that I Was due; Seddon lias never forgiven hiitt. — Truttt.