JOKE ON A MEMBER.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 383, 10 July 1889, Page 4

JOKE ON A MEMBER.

A good joke at the expense of Mr J. C. Brown, member for Tuapeka, is being told in the lobbies. Mr Brown, ib appears, was about eleven days late in arriving on the scene of his legislative duties. In the meantime, the permanent artillery sentries on duty inside, the main entrance to the House had carefully studied the faces of hon. membors, and could at once recognise who were en titled to proceed into the lobbies or stand about the precincts, as the case might be. Mr Brown's face was therefore stiango to the sentries, and it happened on a day after his arrival he entered the House in thoughtful mood and stood for some time in the entrance of the passage way in bli&btul ignorance oi the fact that he was being eyed with grave suspicion by the sentinel on duty there, a man of colossal proportions. Presently this sentry intoimecl Mr Brown that strangers were not allowed to hang around the precincts of the House, and that his room would be better than his company. Mr Biown visibly swelled with indignation as he told the sentry ho was a member. The sentry regarded this statement as an unworthy subterfuge, and a regular " try on," and he presently impressed upon Mr Brown that it "wouldn't wash.' Just as MiBrown wa& about to be ejected from the building, still in appealing accents maintaing that he was a legislator, a well-known whip appeared on the scene, and to him cried Mr Brown for identification, but the whip took in the situation at a glance, and in reply to the *' I say, you know me, don't you '{ I'm a member, aint I?" of the member for Tuapeka, said, " Never saw you before in my life." Brown was then indeed in imminent peril of serious consequences, but tho whip's heart softened atthe sight of his manifest distress, and he let the ncce&sary light on the position, but he said to Mr Brown, "If you don't attend more regularly to your Parliamentary duties, how can you expect to be treated otherwise than as a stranger V '