JDBC and CLOB retrieval question

I'm using JDBC to access a PostgresQL database which contains TEXT
fields. That's the Postgres equivalent of a CLOB. I'm storing strings in
this field with PreparedStatement.setCharacterStream() and getting them
back with ResultSet.getCharacterStream() - this works well, but the code
I use to read the data back is ugly:

    private String retrieveText(ResultSet rs, String column)
          throws SQLException
    {
       StringBuffer buff = new StringBuffer();
       try
       {
          Reader tr = rs.getCharacterStream(column);
          char[] cbuf = new char[50];
          int n;
 

          while ((n = tr.read(cbuf, 0, 50)) != -1)
             buff.append(cbuf);

          tr.close();
       }
       catch (IOException e)
       {
          ....
       }
       return buff.toString();
    }

It works, but is there something a bit more elegant that I should be
using instead of reading chunks via the the loop?

I've probably missed something that should be obvious, so any hints
would be welcome.

--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |