The Name He Lent

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a householder would thank you warmly at the door, and then say nothing of you to anybody for eleven months.

Two glaziers in the town I have never named, the same crown glass and the same putty.
Both mended a stair window that week, and both were thanked at the door.
One asked, packing his frame, to be sent anybody she heard of.
One wrote a single sentence on a card and said she need say no more.
By spring the first had heard nothing, and the second had four houses in that row.
Same glass, same putty, same good work in both windows. What was written on the card?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Glazing is a trade of small disasters. The pane travels three streets in a frame on a man's back and arrives whole or it does not. The old putty must be hacked from the rebate without splitting the sash. Done well, the work is invisible. Nobody admires a window. They notice it when the wind comes through.

Both men were sound at it. Both mended the stair window of a house in a terrace of nine, and both were thanked at the door. The first, pulling his frame onto his shoulder, said what every honest tradesman says. If she heard of anybody wanting glazing, he would be glad of the name. She said she certainly would, and she meant it. Over the following months three houses in that terrace had glass broken, and she mentioned him to none of them. Asked afterwards, she said she had thought of it once, in the butcher's, and then thought that she had seen him do one window only, and that if he made a poor job of a neighbour's whole front, the neighbour would not think the worse of a glazier he had never met. He would think the worse of her.

The second glazier did the same work and then four minutes more. He wrote on a card his name, his street and one sentence, and read the sentence out. She was not to tell anybody he was a good glazier, since she had seen him mend one window and that was not enough to go on. She was to say only this: that he came on the Tuesday he said he would, and that he writes the price down before he starts and takes nothing if you change your mind at the door. Anybody she sent would have that written price first, and she might say so.

Four months later a neighbour had a sash broken by a ladder. The householder did not vouch for him, which was the whole point. She handed over the card, repeated what she had seen with her own eyes, and said there was nothing to lose in having the figure. The neighbour had it, took the work and told the house opposite. By spring the second glazier had done four windows in that terrace, and the first, no worse a workman, had done none and supposed trade was quiet.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A customer who recommends you is not spending your reputation, he is spending his own, and he will not spend it on a bet he cannot cover. Most of the silence you take for forgetfulness or ingratitude is prudence, and prudence is answered by changing the size of the bet, not by asking twice.

Think what you are requesting when you ask to be mentioned. You are asking a man to stake his judgement, before people whose opinion of him he must live with, on your conduct at a house he will never visit. He gains nothing if it goes well. If it goes badly he is the fool who sent you. Most people decline that wager without once framing it as a decision. They simply find they have not mentioned you.

This explains what looks like bad luck. You are recommended for small jobs and passed over for large, because the stake rises with the work, and recommended to a neighbour sooner than to a brother, because the closer the friend the dearer the judgement risked.

The cure is not enthusiasm but a smaller stake, got in three ways that work together.

First, shrink what he has to claim. A verdict on your trade is beyond his knowledge and he knows it. A fact he witnessed is not. He cannot swear you are the best glazier in the county. He can swear you came on Tuesday. Hand him that small true sentence and he will use it, since he could defend every word if challenged, and what he guards is his standing as a man who does not talk loosely.

Second, put the risk on yourself in words he can repeat. A written price before the work, a plain right to refuse, a stated remedy when it is wrong. He is then not endorsing your character, but passing on an arrangement in which his friend cannot be much hurt, and a cautious man does that freely. It is why the vague request for anybody you hear of returns nothing: it asks an open guarantee of your conduct in every future case.

Third, close the loop. The man who sent you is uneasy until he hears, and he hears nothing, because people report back only when something has gone wrong. Write when the job is done and tell him it went well. You have paid him in the only coin he spent, and the second recommendation comes easier than the first.

Two cautions. Do not buy your way past this, since money turns a recommendation into a sale and the listener can smell it, as the dancing master found. And a man who has seen little of your work should not be pressed into vouching for a great deal of it. Push him, and when the job goes badly you lose two customers rather than one. None of this makes poor work recommendable. It lowers the cost of saying a true thing, no more.

Three questions, to be answered before you go to bed tonight:

1. What exact sentence do I want a customer to say? Write it out. If it contains the word best, or good, or any judgement he cannot support himself, it is too large and he will not risk it. Cut it to two things he watched happen.
2. What does the person he sends me risk? If they must commit before they know the price, or no remedy is stated when work goes wrong, your recommender is being asked to guarantee you himself. He will not.
3. Who sent me work this year and never heard how it went? Make that list tonight. Every name on it took a risk for you and is owed four lines.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same glass, same putty, same good work in both windows. What was written on the card?

Not praise. One sentence small enough that she could swear to every word of it, and a promise that whoever she sent would have a written price and be free to refuse it. He never asked her to vouch for him. He gave her something to pass on that put nothing of hers at stake.

The verse:

He asked her for a good word and she gave him her consent,
But a good word draws on credit that is hers and never his.
The second asked for nothing but the two things she had seen,
And a small claim honestly made will travel down a street.

Until next time. Go and write the one sentence you would have a customer repeat about you, small enough that he could swear to it, and give it to the next person whose work you finish.

P.S. The same arithmetic governs any favour you ask. Work out what the other man risks, and who hears of it if he is wrong, then make the favour smaller until the answer is nothing much. Most refusals are not refusals of you, but of an exposure you never noticed you were asking for.

Also in the archive: Who Sent You, The Forty Names in January and The Man at the Turnpike Gate.