A WARNING TO TRUANT MEMBERS.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7355, 6 July 1889, Page 5

A WARNING TO TRUANT MEMBERS.

[Bγ Telegraph.]

[PBOU OUR CORRESPONDENT.]

WELLINGTON. July 5.

A good joke at the expense of Mr J. C. Brown, Member for Tnapeka, is being told (says the Evening Press) in the lobbies. Mr Brown, it appears, was about eleven days in arriving on the scene of his {legislative duties. In the meantime, Permanent Artillery sentries on duty inside the main entrance to the House had carefully studied the faces of hon. members, and could at one glance recognise who were entitled to proceed into the lobbies or stand about the precincts, as the case might be. Mr Brown's face was, therefore, strange to the sentries, and it happened that on the day after his arrival he entered the House in a thoughtful mood, and stood for some time in the entrance passage way in blissful ignorance of the fact that he waa being eyed with grave suspicion by the sentinel on duty, a man of colossal proportions. Presently this sentry informed Mr Brown that strangers were not allowed to hang about the precincts of the House, and that his room would be better than his company. Mr Brown visibly swelled with indignation as he told the sentry he was a member. The sentry regarded this statement as an unworthy subterfuge and a regular try-on, and he privately impressed on Mr Brown that it wouldn't wash. Just as Mr Brown was about to be ejected from the building, still in appealing accents maintaining he was a legislator, a well known whip appeared on the scene, and to him cried Mr Brown for identification, but the whip took the situation in at a glance and in reply to the "I say, you know mc, don't you. I'm a member, ain't I?" from the member for Toapeka, the whip said, " I never saw you before in my life." Mr Brown was then indeed in imminent peril of various consequences, but the whip's heart softened at the sight of his manifest distress, and he let the necessary light on the position; but he said to Mr Brown, " It' you don't attend more regularly to your parliamentary duties, how can you expect to be treated otherwise than a stranger ? "