One day during a sea voyage a white man was telling a number of us how the native workman ought to be managed. Addressing a missionary he said: “You missionaries make a great mistake in being kind to the native workman. To let him know that you value him is to spoil him; to praise him is to make him impudent; to trust him is to make him a thief. The proper way to manage him is never to speak to him without swearing; and to curse him even when he does his best. They are all misbegotten sons of rum-puncheons, whose highest idea of heaven is idleness and drink. They hate us all, and the only way to get any service out of them is to use the club. Every man who has ever worked for me bears the mark of my club, and some of them I have maimed for life. It is the only way to get the brutes to do anything.” The missionary replied: “I believe every word that you say in regard to your treatment of the native. But this much at least is to be said for my method, as against yours, that mine is a complete success, and yours a complete failure, even according to your own confession. Most men do not brag about their failures, nor try to teach others what they themselves have not yet learned. In spite of kicks and curses you do not get the natives to work. One must conclude, therefore, that you like kicking and cursing more than you like success. Now my method succeeds to the extent that I usually get from the native all the service for which I pay him; and, besides, they have nursed me when I was sick; and they have vied with each other in protecting me from the sun by day and storms by night; they have exposed themselves to danger for my sake, and they have even saved my life at the extremest peril of their own. But would you therefore exchange your method for mine? No; not even for the sake of success.”