upon it there are few employers who will not see and reward such
efforts. Draining, ditching, circling, hedging, road-making, building,
etc., may all be effected to a greater or less extent every season.

During the long evenings of winter improve your own mind and the
knowledge of your profession by reading and study. The many excellent
agricultural periodicals and books now published afford good and cheap
opportunities for this.

It is indispensable that you exercise judgment and consideration in
the management of the negroes under your charge. Be _firm_, and, at
the same time, _gentle_ in your control. Never display yourself before
them in a passion; and even if inflicting the severest punishment, do
so in a mild, cool manner, and it will produce a tenfold effect. When
you find it necessary to use the whip--and desirable as it would be to
dispense with it entirely, it _is_ necessary at times--apply it slowly
and deliberately, and to the extent you had determined, in your own
mind, to be needful before you began. The indiscriminate, constant,
and excessive use of the whip is altogether unnecessary and
inexcusable. When it can be done without a too great loss of time,
the stocks offer a means of punishment greatly to be preferred. So
secured, in a lonely, quiet place, where no communication can be held
with any one, nothing but bread and water allowed, and the confinement
extending from Saturday, when they drop work, until Sabbath evening,
will prove much more effectual in preventing a repetition of the
offense, than any amount of whipping. Never threaten a negro, but if
you have occasion to punish, do it at once, or say nothing until
ready to do so. A violent and passionate threat will often scare the
best-disposed negro to the woods. Always keep your word with them, in
punishments as well as in rewards. If you have named the penalty for
any certain offense, inflict it without listening to a word of excuse.
Never forgive that in one that you would punish in another, but treat
all alike, showing no favoritism. By pursuing such a course, you
convince them that you act from principle and not from impulse, and
will certainly enforce your rules. Whenever an opportunity is
afforded you for rewarding continued good behavior, do not let it
pass--occasional rewards have a much better effect than frequent
punishments.

Never be induced by a course of good behavior on the part of the
negroes to relax the strictness of your d