PEOPHIETOK PLANTEES.” 
Come, come,” we reply, ‘Hhis won’t do, ‘Sheer 
luck* indeed ! Don’t you remember what I wrote 
«ome time ago about chances passing by, and how 
every man certainly has had some, but he either did 
not know it, and they floated past, whispering softly 
‘Catch me, catch me,’ or he did not hear the whis- 
per? If he did hear something, what more probable 
than to give his ear a brush with his hand, mutter^ 
‘ Confound those mosqitoes,’ and pass on, in the 
opposite direction 1” Some of my friends did all they 
could to prevent my becoming a proprietor. They 
reasoned with me on the absurdity I was about to 
commit. “A sensible fellow like you,” &c. [For 
really, absurd and impossible as some may imagine it, 
the writer was once considered a sensible fellow, or 
at all events we were told so, but very likely this was 
only before our face, and no sooner was the “sen- 
sible fellow ” gone out of the room, than the one 
remarks to the other, “ Isn’t he an obstinate old 
fool?” Well, obstinacy i^ not a had Ipoiiit, if you 
are in the right. An obstinate man is entitled to 
more respect, even should he be wrong in his views^ 
than your soft pliable fellow who is never sure about 
anything he does being right, and always ready to is 
turn aside on the argument of any sensible fellow 
(in his own estimation) who insists upon giving advice. 
Such a one is sure to And himself before very long 
in the same position as the old man and his ass, as 
described in the nursery fable, and had better go 
back to ihe nursery, which he will find a more suit- 
able residence than the “cinnamon isle.”] 
This preliminary flourish having cooled us down a 
bit, we state our opinion to be that we are hardly 
fit to write fully on a proprietor’s life in the olden 
^times, being only a junior assistant, and as such 
held in small esteem by, and considered no fitting 
associate for, the great “big-wigs” of the time, big 
in their own estimation, so big that, ofteiier than 
otherwise, they burst and collapsed, “ Only a poor' 
assistant,” for then the superintendent havi not th© 
same.^oc'ia^ stanclioi^ as he nas now, which may be 
briefly shewn in relating an anecdote that actually 
occurred at the Gampola resthouse. “Boy,” says a 
traveller, dismounting from his horse, “is there any 
one in the public room?” “ Yes, sar,” was the reply: 
“one gentleman and two coffee planters.” Ey using 
the, words “coffee planters,” the way in which he 
did he meant to infer that they were only super- 
intendent?-. 
Proprietor planters were great swells, the great bulk 
of them being retired naval or military officers and 
<8X«ConimaiLders of vessels in the Bombay and China 
Q 
