"KING DICK."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7685, 8 February 1904, Page 3

"KING DICK."

Abounding Faith in His Power.

The kind of affectionate familiarity which New Zealanders display towards Mr Seddon was strikingly exemplified on board the Moeraki during the time of excitement at Hobart. In the saloon a mock telegram was posted, which read: -" To King Dick, Maoriland, — Moeraki's passengers threatened quarantine. Kindly order otherwise." The amateur athletes who wero on board—there were only two of them, Simpson and Webster —did actually send him a telegram urging him to intervene against them being quarantined in Melbourne, in which case they would have missed the sports meeting here. Though they had not received a reply when the Moeraki reached Melbourne, I am sure they are fully convinced that Mr Seddon arranged for the unrestricted landing entirely in their interests. And possibly they are right. But in Victoria we cannot imagine a couple of pedestrians taking the liberty of telegraphing such a message to our Mr Irvine, who is a cold as an icicle and as haughty as a hansom-driver. A young woman at Hobart also, when she learned she was to bo carried on to Melbourne against her will, set to work to rate "Dick Seddon," as she called him, most vigorously as the cause of all her misfortunes. Evidently she was possessed by the belief that Hobart was retaliating against New Zealand for shuttingdown on communication during the Tasmanian smallpox epidemic. "It's all that Dick Seddon's work," she cried, with tears of wrath in her eyes ; "if I had him here I'd choke him."