JOHN THE HEAD PORTER

Hokitika Guardian, 2 April 1925, Page 4

JOHN THE HEAD PORTER

I,HX BOX, .lamiary 20. John,” the head porter of the City of Loudon School, on Victoria Kmli.iiikiueiit, K.C., is to retire nt the end of the Muster term.

Crown men in many parts of the world, learning the news, will become' cm e-t ree schoolboys lor the moment, for John Tollett has been an institution at the school since it was moved to the present premises 12 years ago.

for 23 years he has been head porter. and a figure of awe to the schoolhoys who have passed through the portals. John Inis also been the principal toastmaster at the Cuildhall for the last IA years. On many occasions he has had to " pray silence ” for some well-known man whom he remembered as a school hoy subject to bis authority.

Calling upon John at the school last, night when the corridors were silent and the class-rooms empty, a reporter found a genial, spectacled man. hill of the wisdom and good nature which r come to so many of those who have spent their lives among hoys. BOVS TIIK SAME AS EVER. ][e is a retiring man. and he was reluctant to talk about his long years in the service of tiie school. Really as head porter f am nothing, and yet in a why 1 am somebody (he said modestly). T have seen few changes. The boys to-day seem to me just as they were 42 years ago. They do not seem to me to have altered nt all. They are just as human, just boys as they always were.

1 have never had any trouble with them. They have never played a practical joke on me. You want to use tact with them—and things go smoothly. In the old days, too. porters here had more authority than to-day—-though we have a certain amount now. "When the hoys come hack here grown up 1 generally recognise them. I suppose 1 see the hoy rather than the man.