The ex-member for the Suburbs

Dr Newman, the chirpy little ex-M.HR. for Wellington Suburbs, has been loading up the Wellington Natives' Association with reminiscences of his recent trip Home. He went to all the music halls in London, and didn't manage to capture a single fresh joke to take back to New Zealand. But he found out there were 14,000 odd motor-cars in the streets of the big metropolis, and he is quite convinced now that for traction purposes the gee-gee has got to go. The motorcars, he said, could run up and down the Karori hills as easily as they could run along the Wellington flats. The little doctor seems to have had plenty of attention paid to him during the Jubilee time, for he naively remarks that whereas on the occasion of his previous visit home nobody seemed to care two straws about the colony (and, as the greater includes the less, about Dr. Newman either presumably), yet, during the Jubilee, all Antipodean visitors were overwhelmed with kind, generous, and hospitable treatment.' The ex-member for the Suburbs is quite out of conceit now with New Zealand architecture. All the new style of houses in England,' he says, from the 15s. suburban villa to the mansion, are beautiful the houses in New Zealand are as ugly as possibly can be. I own two so I can speak with authority.' Finally, Dr. Newman wants the Wellington Natives' Association to help the Rugby Union to send home a team of footballers, and promises them a big reception. 

"Pars' About People." Observer, 8 January 1898, 6.