SEBYANTS. 
our readers, who have been supposing all along they 
knew very well who the old planter was ! ISTever mind 
who he was. The conclusion of the chapter will 
shew he was not 
P. D. Millie, 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Troubles with Servants— -Tamils and Sinhalese. 
These dreadful servants ! Do you know any one 
who can recommend a really good servant ? ” How 
often has this expression, or something like it, met 
the ear, when one is knocking about the old coun- 
try. We have sometimes wondered if the expression 
was ever used by the servants themselves per contra, 
“These dreadful masters, or rather mistresses.’' No 
doubt it is, and the dreadful servant just considers 
herself as unfortunate in that dreadful mistress, be- 
cause there can be little doubt that, if the dreadful 
feeling is felt one side, it will be also on the other. 
The general complaint about bad servants is in a 
manner universal, complaints that in a great number 
of cases are frivolous and uncalled for. We often 
wish those who are grumbling about bad servants 
had experienced some of the realities of bad servants, 
and no servant at all, in some of the outlying coffee 
estates “thirty years ago,” or even later. In those 
times, no servant of good character and ability could 
be induced to go up-country, unless he had more 
than a usual respect for his master ; no doubt his 
silent reasoning was : “If master chooses to go and 
live in mud huts, or talipot tents, with nothing to 
eat but rice and pumpkin, it was no reason why he 
should. Master can do as he likes.” He will not 
wantonly give up his chatting at the bazars, his glass 
of arrack, and all his other little specialities and per- 
quisites, and so it generally happened, when the mas- 
ter made arrangements to leave town for life on the 
estates, the faithful servant bewailed his hard fate 
in not being able to go with him ; it was so unfor- 
tunate, so particularly unfortunate, just at this very 
identical time, that his father, mother, or some other 
of his very near and dear relatives, was very sick, 
dying, and in urgent and possitive want of his per- 
sonal attendance. To our old country readers we may 
explain, servants are engaged, or ratfier their en- 
gagement is considered, only a monthly one, subject 
to fifteen days’ notice to quit on either side. The 
Ceylon servant is therefore much more independent 
than the old country one— who is generally en- 
gaged half-yearly, and expected to give certainly a 
