The Stool Under the Bench

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two glovers who took a boy each in the same week of January and wrote the same half hour into their mornings, and the difference between them lay in a single Wednesday.

Two glovers in the town I have never named, the same lambskin, a boy each taken on in the same week.
Both wrote the same half hour into the morning: the bench, the boy, one thing taught before the shop opened.
Both lost that half hour inside the fortnight, for the same good reason, a customer at the door.
One had the stool out and a skin on the board the next morning.
One meant to, and the morning came, and the stool stayed under the bench.
Same skins, same resolution, same January. Where did the year go?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

A glove is almost all labour. A dresser's lambskin is the same lambskin for everybody in the street, and what you sell is the cutting: the skin doled out both ways until it will give no more, the trank laid on so the stretch runs round the hand and not along it. A boy learns to sweep in a morning and to cut in two years, and until he can cut, every pair waits on the master's hands.

Both men saw that in the January and both did the sensible thing. Each took on a boy of thirteen and wrote the same line inside the cover of his day book: half an hour at the bench every morning before the shop opens, one thing taught and nothing else attempted. Not an hour, which neither could spare. Half an hour, which both could. Inside the fortnight a woman came to the door before eight with a death in the family, wanting six pairs of black kid by the Thursday, and in both shops the half hour went to the black kid, as it ought to have done.

The first man's Wednesday is the whole of this letter. He did not weigh whether the half hour was still a good idea, having proved on the Tuesday that the shop ran perfectly well without it. He had the stool out at half past seven and taught the boy why the belly of a skin will betray you in a thumb. He missed nineteen mornings that year by his own count: two fairs, a week of fever, a wedding, one he overslept and was ashamed of. He never missed the morning after a miss.

The second man was not lazy, and it would be a poor story if he were. He was the busier that spring and every reason he had was true. He lost the Tuesday to the black kid, and on the Wednesday the Thursday's work had to go out, so he would begin again on the Monday, as a man may tell himself in good faith. By the second Monday the half hour had stopped being a thing he did and become a thing he intended, and an intention must win its place afresh every morning against a door being knocked on. It never won again, and the boy soon stopped taking the stool out.

By Michaelmas the first man's boy was cutting tranks for plain lambskin and closing a round seam well enough to sell, which gave his master the better part of two days a week back. The second man's boy could sweep, carry and run, and could not cut. His master said, quite truthfully, that he had never had the time, having been given the same three hundred mornings as the man up the street.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A habit is not kept or lost on the day you miss it, but on the morning after, and the only rule worth writing down is that you never miss twice. The first miss costs what it appears to cost: one half hour, which is nothing. The second costs you the habit, and the habit was the whole of the asset. Its value never lay in any single performance, half an hour of teaching being worth little on its own, but in the half hour having stopped being a question, settled in January and not argued about again at ten past seven on a wet Wednesday.

Two misses in a row break exactly that. After one miss the thing keeps its category: it is what you do, and you missed Tuesday. After two it becomes what you were doing until the spring, and must then be chosen afresh every morning, on its merits, against work with a customer behind it and a date on it. It will lose, not because you are weak, but because the morning's arithmetic is done by whoever is making a noise.

You will not feel it go. You keep the memory of the resolution and no tally of the mornings, and your account of your own fortnight will be wrong in your favour, as everybody's account of their own week is. So keep a mark on paper for each morning the thing is done, and settle the question by counting.

The repair must be small or you will not make it. The instinct after a miss is to make up the ground, an hour on the Wednesday for the half hour lost on the Tuesday, which is a punishment, and punishments are not kept. Settle now, in cold blood, on the smallest honest version: ten minutes, one page, one skin, one call. Ten minutes done is nearer the habit than thirty resolved.

Two cautions. The first is that this rule guards continuity and knows nothing of merit. It will keep a useless habit as faithfully as a good one. So name a date and a measure at the start, as you would for any trial you set yourself, and judge it then, rather than on a morning when you do not fancy it. The second is that the rule is mechanical and should cost you no self-examination. A man who turns a missed morning into an inquiry into his own character has set himself a harder second task, and will abandon both.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What is the one daily thing in my trade that no customer will ever ask me for? One, not four. Teaching somebody, writing to old customers, an hour at the figures. If you cannot name it in a sentence, you have not got one, and there is the week's work.
2. How many mornings has it actually had this month? The count, not your impression. Where no mark was made on paper, assume the worse figure.
3. What is its ten-minute version, and where is it written? It must sit where you will see it the morning after a miss, with the decision already made.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same skins, same resolution, same January. Where did the year go?

Into a little over three hundred mornings, handed to both in equal measure. One spent about two hundred and ninety of them at the bench with a boy beside him. The other spent nine. Both missed mornings and both had honest reasons. One never let a miss be followed by a second. The other let a true reason on the Tuesday be joined by a smaller one on the Wednesday, and a year on was cutting every glove himself and calling it want of time.

The verse:

The skins were the same skins, the shears were just as good,
The resolution written in the same January week,
One missed a Tuesday morning and was back where he had stood,
One missed a Tuesday morning and a Wednesday, and a week.

Until next time. Go and write the ten-minute version of your one daily thing on the first page of whatever book you open tomorrow morning.

P.S. A miss you decide on in advance rarely turns into two, because you knew on the Monday that the Thursday was gone and the Friday was not. It is the unplanned miss, excused afterwards, that goes looking for a companion. So when a week is coming that will take your mornings, give them up deliberately and name the day you resume.

Also in the archive: Eleven Things in March, The Shutter at Seven and Before the First Ladder.