FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF MR FRESE. 
laughter, and of course the cooly would consider he 
had done a fine deed, that he was a first-rate fellow ; 
master was laughing,” “ master was pleased” — 
he would ask that very afternoon for an old coat. 
Some would neither adopt either of these courses, but 
send the men back, keep them out till dark, until they 
brought sticks of the specified dimensions ; others 
again would scarcely say a word, but tell the people 
to go away, they were all marked absent. But the 
best course to adopt in cases of this sort is just 
simply to looh after the coolies ; if you can’t do so your- 
self, get some one whom you can trust, have all the 
(Sticks heaped up and examined before being carried, 
and if there are any unsuitable let them be there, 
and then oji the spot rejected, and the man sent to 
cut others. It is a very bad system to punish a cooly 
for having done, or after having done, bad work, if it 
can possibly be avoided, but sometimes however it 
cannot. There are exceptional cases : ‘‘ Prevention is 
better than cure. ” Either by personal supervision or 
by a trustworthy deputy see that the cooly does his. 
work according to instructions; if he does not under- 
stand orders, take a little trouble to explain them ; 
he is endeavouring practically to execute them, and 
after a short time he will probably quite understand 
and fulfil what is required of him. A little tact in 
this way will be better for all parties — proprietor, super- 
intendent, and cooly ; to the proprietor it is no com- 
pensation at all to have the day’s wage of a cooly ta 
his credit and bad work in exchange. The super- 
intendent gets a bad name^^ He does not look after- 
the work, does not explain to them properly, andtheifc 
puts them absent. The cooly considers himself very 
badly used ; more than that, will perhaps suspect or 
hint to his neighbour that master had pocketed his pay 
himself ! This suspicion on the part of the cooly 
used to be a common one in “ the days of old,” but 
not now. As a rule, it was quite groundless, and 
arose from this cause ; a great number of super- 
intendents were men of little or no education, so little- 
that they could not correctly do up” a pay-list, and 
as for proving it, as is invariably done now, such a 
useless (?) troublesome action never entered intO' their 
minds. The frequent results were that the pay-list 
was full of errors : those who were paid too much — 
had less rice placed to their debit than they had actually 
received — said nothing ; or — what was more likely — 
made some mild protest that their pay was very short,, 
and they were charged for more rice than they had 
drawn; but not being very troublesome, and master 
seeing the injured man slowly moving off, was but too 
glad to be set free from the disagreeable duty of 
