The Cutting in the Window

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the autumn the parish had the assembly rooms done over, two plasterers were at work within half a mile of one another.

Two plasterers, the same lime, the same hair, the same hawk and trowel,
The same rate by the yard, the same patient hand at a cornice.
One bought two inches of the county paper every week for a year.
One walked up to the newspaper office once and asked a man to come and look.
Both had their names in that paper before Michaelmas.
Which of them was printed, and which of them was mentioned?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two plasterers in the town I've never named, and their work, in the old chorus, was equally good. Both could run a cornice by hand, patch a ceiling so the patch could not be found by candlelight, and match a lime gone its own colour over sixty years.

The first man did the sensible thing and bought space. Two inches in the county paper, the same column, fifty-two weeks together. The copy was decent: what he did, where the shop stood, a line about old ceilings being saved rather than pulled down. Nobody could have called him wrong, and the advertisements brought work in thinly and steadily all year.

The second man had the assembly rooms. On the third morning, going at the ceiling of the small room with a scraper, he came through six coats of limewash onto colour. Vine leaves. Two birds. A date in the corner in a thin brown hand, older than anybody supposed the building to be.

He could have gone over it. A morning's work, three coats, nobody the wiser for another century. Instead he sent his lad home for soft brushes, spent two days on a trestle with warm water, uncovering nine feet at his own expense, then walked up to the newspaper office to say there was something worth coming to see.

The editor sent a man round that afternoon. On the Saturday there were three quarters of a column: the ceiling, the date, the parish, speculation about who had painted it, and four lines about the plasterer who found it, quoting one sentence of his, that the limewash which hid the painting had also preserved it.

Consider what he held that no money could buy. By spring he was asked to look at ceilings in three parishes. He cut the column out, pasted it inside the shop window at eye height, and a second copy into the back of the book he carried when giving a price. Five years on it was browned at the folds and still working. His rival's inches were wrapping haddock by the Saturday following, and nobody ever walked in to say they had read one.

Be fair to the first man. Bought space is how a trade keeps a floor under itself. His error was narrower than it looks. He worked that year on ceilings quite as interesting as the other man's, and never thought any of it anybody's business but his own.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The notice that does you the most good is the notice you did not write, which is why it cannot be bought, only earned and then kept working. Every reader discounts an advertisement before he reaches the end of it, and does not consult you about the rate. He knows a man writing about himself prints the best that can honestly be said. The same words in another mouth arrive at no discount.

That is the mechanism of the folder of good words set out in asking for proof instead of praise, carried a step further out. A customer who speaks well of you has an interest in having chosen well. A man whose trade is reporting has none, and that indifference is why his three inches outweigh your fifty-two.

There is a second advantage nobody thinks of while buying space: a mention is a possession, where bought inches are a tenancy that expires the week it appears. It can go in the window, at the head of an estimate, into a letter three years afterwards, and you own it as long as the paper holds together.

Now the part you can repeat, since the ceiling cannot be. The ceiling was luck. The walk up to the market was not. Every trade throws up two or three things a year that an outsider would find interesting and the tradesman dismisses as shop talk. The oldest thing you have mended. The fault you keep meeting in one street. A number nobody else has troubled to count. The man who gets written about is not the one whose work is more remarkable. He is the one who settled in advance that such things are to be reported, and learned whose business it is to report them.

There are more such people now than there have ever been: the county paper, the trade journal, the writer whose weekly letter your customers read at breakfast, whoever has gathered a crowd you would like to stand before. They must fill a space next week, and the week after that, and you hold the thing that fills it. Bring them the ceiling and they print your name beside it. Bring them your price list and they quote you the advertising rate.

Two cautions. First, this cannot be the whole of your marketing, since you cannot order a mention for the fortnight the order book thins. Keep the steady means running underneath, and treat notice as a windfall you have made likely. Second, the deed must be one you would be content to have examined, for a kindness done in order to be printed has a smell that carries. A column admired but not fastened to what you sell is the trouble in being admired rather than being paid, and has been known to sell no plaster at all.

Three questions, before you buy another inch of anything:

1. What have you seen this year that a stranger would call interesting? Write three things down without judging them. You are the worst judge of this alive, being used to your own trade, so put the list before somebody outside it and see which they ask about.
2. Whose business is it to fill a space every week? Name three in your town or your trade and write what each is short of. Then send one something useful whether or not they name you.
3. Where is the last mention you were given? In a drawer it is worth nothing. Get it into the window, the estimate, the wall by the door and the foot of your letters, and leave it there until the paper yellows.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of them was printed, and which of them was mentioned?

The first was printed, fifty-two times over, and paid for every line. The second was mentioned once, for nothing, and the town carried the mention about for years. Both names stood in the same paper: one where names are bought, discounted at the usual rate, the other where names are earned, in a stranger's hand, and believed at once.

The verse:

One bought two honest inches and paid for them by the year,
One found a painted ceiling and walked up to tell the news.
The purchased inch was wrapping fish before the month was out,
The given one hung browning in a window, selling still.

Until next time. Go and write down the one thing you have seen this year that a stranger would call interesting, and beside it whoever's business it is to tell it.

P.S. Those four lines of quoted speech did him more good than the column they sat inside. A reporter puts your facts into his own words, but he prints your sentence as you said it, which makes it the only part of the piece you control. Have one ready before you knock: short, plain, about the work and not yourself. Half the parish repeated the plasterer's, and in repeating it told one another that here was a man who understood old ceilings.

Also in the archive: The Mason's Witnesses, Everyone Liked It and The Collab.