Nothing After the Sweeping

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the week when the hop growers sent round for ladders, two makers were asked one question at the same late hour.

Two ladder makers, the same ash for the sides, the same oak for the rungs, the same bench.
Both were asked for twenty ladders before the picking, and both asked after eight at night.
Both knew their price to the shilling and what such an order wants in weeks.
One answered that evening, with the day's dust still on him.
One chalked the question on a slate by the door and answered at seven next morning.
What did the second man know about himself that the first did not?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two ladder makers in the town I've never named, their yards a quarter of a mile apart on one lane. The same ash from the same merchant, the same oak rungs driven through and wedged, nine shillings for a sixteen-rung ladder from either. Side by side on the grass their work could not be told apart.

In the last week of June a grower's man came down the lane at a quarter past eight. He wanted twenty ladders before the picking, which meant the first week of September, and wanted to know that night, being due to ride on in the morning.

The first maker worked it out at his kitchen table with his boots off. Twenty ladders, a fortnight he thought, three weeks at the outside, and all of July and August in front of him. He said yes to the date and yes to the price, and felt the pleasure of a thing settled. Be fair to him: by daylight he was the better reckoner of the two.

He had not counted the ordinary work that keeps arriving, nor the ash that wanted drying, nor the August fortnight when his man was cutting his own harvest. He was nine days late, the grower held back a pound, and he worked two Sundays to get there at all. Nor was it his only such evening: in September he agreed to a load of ash he had not seen, and half of it burned.

The second maker had the same knock. He said what he said to everybody: that he would have a firm answer before nine next morning, and would the man call on his way out of town. Then he chalked three words on the slate by the door and went to bed.

The slate was not cleverness. It came of a winter when he went through his order book and found that of the six arrangements he had been sorry about, five were agreed after the shop was swept. He did not conclude that he was careless, but something narrower: that the hours in which he was fit to saw were not those in which he was fit to promise. So he made a rule of the clock, his own feeling being the thing he had stopped trusting.

At seven, with the order book open and the shop quiet, twenty ladders stopped being a fortnight and became twenty-six working days, which is what they had been the last two times he counted. He offered twelve by the first week of September and eight by the end of it, at nine shillings, both dates in writing. The grower took it, the other man having promised the whole twenty and asked him nothing.

Over the year the first man took more orders and finished with less money, two spoiled Sundays and a load of firewood. The ending was not close.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your judgement keeps the same hours as your arms, and it closes earlier, so the decisions that bind you belong at the start of a working day and not at the end of one. This is no complaint about working too hard. The first maker was the harder worker. It is a question of which part of the day you were in when you agreed to the thing you are now stuck with.

Notice that the errors of the evening have a shape. The tired answer says yes. It takes the first figure mentioned to it. It is cheerful about weeks. Above all it prefers the end of the conversation to the right answer. Errors that lean one way are not bad luck but a bias, and a bias is corrected with no improvement in character, simply by moving the hour at which you answer.

The difficulty is that you cannot feel it happening. A tired arm says so. Tired judgement says nothing, the faculty that would have noticed being the one that has gone home. A man deciding whether he is fit to decide has put the question to the only witness who cannot answer it. Hence a rule of the clock, which sits outside you and is honest at eleven at night.

Weigh what the rule costs. Waiting until morning loses nothing, provided you name the hour and keep it. Against that, the price of one wrong date: nine days, a pound held back, two Sundays, and a name for running late. A small certain saving against a large occasional loss makes the over-careful rule the cheap one. It is giving the day a named end, carried further: the last hour should not be allowed to sign anything.

You will be told that a trader must be decisive, and that the man who answers tomorrow loses the work. What loses work is vagueness, which is an answer with no hour attached. I will let you know is weak. I will have a firm answer before nine tomorrow is not, and it tells the customer how you keep promises. Ask what will truly have changed by then. Usually nothing but the asker's convenience.

Two cautions. The rule is for decisions that bind you: a price, a date, an engagement, a sum borrowed, a man taken on. It is not for the small matters of an evening, and a trader who settles nothing after six is a nuisance, and will be dealt with less. And the slate must be cleared every morning. A question sitting there three days waits not for your best hours but for you, which is a different fault with a different remedy.

Three questions, about the way your own week is arranged:

1. Which decisions of the last month were settled after six? Name them from the book: figures given, dates promised, people engaged. Then ask how many you would make again at eight in the morning.
2. What do you say to somebody who wants an answer tonight? Write that sentence now, with an hour in it. One invented at nine at night comes out as yes, that being the shortest way to bed.
3. What occupies your first two hours? If the sharpest part of the day goes on carting and invoices while pricing and promising are left to the dregs, you have the day the wrong way round.

The Answer to the Riddle

What did the second man know about himself that the first did not?

That his judgement shut up shop before he did, and that he would not feel it go. The first trusted himself at a quarter past eight because he felt capable, which is what a tired man feels. The second consulted the clock, and the same question, put to the same head nine hours later, got a better answer.

The verse:

The ash was matched, the oak was matched, the asking was the same,
One gave his word by candle-end and later wore the blame.
One chalked it up and went to bed and answered it at seven,
And of the two it was the slate that kept the order even.

Until next time. Go and name the hour after which nothing in your trade gets agreed, and put something by the door to write the questions on.

P.S. The slate has a second use, found by accident. A question chalked up at night is often answered by morning with no deciding at all, having grown an obvious answer or lost the man who asked it. Keep it a month and count how many matters pressed on you at night needed settling by nobody.

Also in the archive: Set Aside at Nine in the Evening, Five Months and Two Days and The Hour Nobody Claimed.