The Eleventh Letter

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a man who was owed money had his whole evening in which to think about it, and many a decent trade was eaten from the inside by a sum too small to mention in company. Your century argues faster, and is eaten the same way.

Two sign writers in the old town, the same gold leaf and the same brushes in the same tin of turpentine.
Both lettered a draper's fascia in the March, and both billed seven pounds ten.
Both were paid four pounds ten, and both were told the green was not the green agreed.
One wrote eleven letters about the three pounds, and was right in every one of them.
One wrote a single letter, took two pounds in the April, and said no more about it.
Same trade, same three pounds held back. Which of them had the better year?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trade is sign writing. A scaffold board across the pavement, the fascia rubbed down and primed, the letters pounced through a pricked pattern, then the colour laid on with the hand steadied on a mahl stick while the shop sells underneath you. Blocked and shaded letters, the name gilded, came to seven pounds ten in that town.

The draper wanted his name and the word Mercer, the ground to be dark green, and those four words went down on the order sheet. The man who got the work mixed what he always mixed for a dark green, a deep colour with a deal of black in it. On the Friday the draper stood in the road, looked up at his own name and saw something close to black. He had carried a different green in his head since Christmas, the green of a tea canister on his counter, and had never once said it aloud. He paid four pounds ten and held back three.

The sign writer was in the right. The order said dark green, his pot said dark green, and any man in the trade would have agreed. He began a letter that evening, and wrote eleven between the March and the September, each shorter and colder than the last. He called at the shop twice, and spent a morning in a clerk's office hearing what the law would charge him for his three pounds. In the September the draper moved to a bigger shop, settled up in a hurry, and paid.

The second man had a boy to pay on a Saturday. He called within the week, stood in the doorway at four when the sun was off the board and the green looked its worst, and let the draper talk. He never mentioned the order sheet. He said the colour had gone darker in place than it looked in the pot, that he would take two pounds and close the account, and that he would lighten the ground for the price of the paint when the scaffold was next up in that row. He left a pound short, and knew it.

What he also had was the spring. Between the April and the July he walked the three streets behind the market with a card, because a man not thinking about a draper can think about where the next fascia is coming from. He lettered nine, two carts and a tobacconist's window. The first man's nine went elsewhere by no divine arrangement. Nobody asked him, and he was in no state to ask.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The sum in dispute is never what the dispute costs you, because the greater part of the bill is paid in attention, and attention is the one thing in your trade for which no invoice is ever rendered. You will get the three pounds back. You will not get the spring back.

Do the arithmetic nobody does. Eleven letters, two calls at a shop, a morning with a clerk, and the quarter of an hour each evening when the thing is turned over again. Put it at four working days, which is modest. A sign writer clear of his colours and his boy might take fifteen shillings in a day, so four days is three pounds. He recovered three pounds and spent three pounds recovering them, in the months when every shopkeeper decides whether this is the year he smartens his front.

Nor are they ordinary hours. A grievance is written before breakfast, when a man is sharpest, and nobody who has sent a cold letter at eight is fit to ask a stranger for work at nine. The money comes back in the end. The morning does not.

There is a trap here that catches steady men. The eleventh letter is not sent because it will produce three pounds. It is sent because ten have gone already, and stopping would admit the ten were wasted. They are wasted whatever you do next, as I have argued in the matter of money already spent. The only live question is what the next hour is worth, and the answer rarely has the draper in it.

There is a second charge, paid by customers who have done nothing. A man fresh from a quarrel writes his next dozen orders in a temper, and has charged one bad fortnight to every honest householder in the town. Terms are changed in cold blood or not at all.

So decide in advance, while nothing is owed and nobody has annoyed you. Name the figure below which you will not pursue anybody past a second plain letter. For most small trades it sits nearer a day's takings than a week's. The naming is the whole benefit: a figure settled on a quiet Tuesday cannot be argued with at eleven at night by a man with a grievance and a pen.

Then put the saved effort upstream of the brush. A part payment before the work begins ends more disputes than any letter written after it, as the threshing men found on the Tuesday nobody paid for. And dark green is not a specification, it is two men agreeing to find out later. A scrap of board with the colour on it, held up in the doorway and initialled, costs a minute and settles the only thing in doubt.

Two cautions. This is no argument for letting your money go. A trade known to forget what it is owed will be forgotten by everybody, and the first asking, on the day, in writing, plainly, is never the part to drop. You are deciding where the asking stops, not whether it starts. And do not put a small rule on a large sum.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What is the largest sum I will let go rather than pursue past a second letter? Name it today and keep it with the order book. A figure set while you are calm is the only instruction your angry self will take.
2. What did my last dispute cost me in days, and what does a day of mine earn? Multiply the two and set it beside the sum you were arguing over. Few men have seen those figures on one page.
3. Which sentence, written before the work began, would have prevented it? A colour shown, a measure given, a date named, a part payment taken. Put it in your next order and the dispute will have bought you something.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same trade, same three pounds held back. Which of them had the better year?

The one who took two pounds in the April. He was a pound down on the account and nine fascias up on the year, and the difference was neither luck nor charm. He had his mornings and the other man did not. The first was right throughout, had his money in the end, and paid for it in a currency his ledger has no column for.

The verse:

The three pounds held is a little thing,
And eleven letters are a spring,
So fix the sum you will let go,
And keep your mornings for the work.

Until next time. Go and write down the figure below which you will not pursue anybody past a second letter, and put it where you keep your order book.

P.S. Most of these quarrels are not about money. The draper held back three pounds because the first time he saw that green it was twelve feet above his door, dry, and paid for. A man will argue over a small sum rather than say what he feels, which is that he was not shown. Show people the thing while it can still be changed, and many of your bad debts will prove to have been bad explanations.

Also in the archive: Five Months and Two Days, Nine Weeks in a Tin and The Hour Nobody Claimed.