Page 6 Advertisements Column 2

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19461, 28 December 1934, Page 6

Buffers, Geysers and Jossers. —The Poet Laureate, Mr J. Masefield, rapidly gained the confidence of an audience o r 2000 secondary school children who had gathered at the Town Hall, Melbourne, on a recent afternoon to hear him tell stories. “When I was a lad,” said the Poet Laureate, “I often occupied a scat in a large hall and sat as you sit, looking up at a person of the male species.” Sometimes, said Mr Masefield, the male person was referred to by the boys as an "old josser,” sometimes as an “old buffer” and sometimes as an "old geyser." An old buffer was a breezy sort of person, but geysers and jossers were inferior types who could hardly be expected to attain buffer-ship. lie used to listen to the buffer, geyser or josser with anguish, and when Ihe platitude was uttered (as it always was), "School days are the happiest days of one's life,” he felt that life was indeed a blank and dismal business. Later Mr Masefield read a number of his poems, including one written under shellfire. Obviously the one the children knew and appreciated best was 'Sea Fever.-*'