THE INTERVIEWING NUISANCE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVIII, Issue 2746, 18 February 1896, Page 2

THE INTERVIEWING NUISANCE.

REDUCING ll’ TO A FINE AET. In no town in the Colony is tho practice of interviewing Ministers of the Crown carried to such excess as in Auckland. The Hon Mr Cadman spent three days there quite recently, and .so numerous were the callers that, although he only allowed himself half an hour for lunch and half an hour for dinner, each day was entirely taken up in receiving deputations, and all his- departmental work had to be despatched at night. On tho first day lie received visits from 103 persons, and tho next forenoon he gave audience to 66 more, but in the afternoon business took him away from the office. The third day brought its full quota of visitors, and a long procession was still waiting their turn. Tho Minister’s departure was announced for tho fourth day, and a multitude of disappointed interviewers turned up at the railway station to seize tho lust chance. Hut Mr Cadman had boon there before, and therefore boarded the train for Onohung.a at Newmarket. But even this ruse had. heoh foreseen by a number of the more wide-awake ones, and they also took'’passage by tlio train, aud improved tho occasion to secure the interviews for which they had boon waiting. It is related of Mr Cadman that on one occasion be resolved to see how long it would take to got through the army of interviewers at Auckland, and that, after devoting eight solid days to them, and then finding tho host' apparently as numerous as ever, he was forced to beat a precipitate retreat. One of tho most novel deputations he has ever received waited upon him recently in a Waikato township. It was composed of four young ladies, whose anxious prayer was that ho might be pleased not to remove from the district the young and unmarried stationmaster.