The Sum He Would Rather Not Do

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a man could tell you the weight of a tallow cask to the ounce and still not know whether half his week paid him a penny.

Two tallow chandlers in one town, the same vats and the same wicks.
Both took a cart out every Thursday to the farms on the high ground.
Both half suspected the round earned less than a day at the bench.
One left it at half suspected for eleven years.
One shut the shop door, took a sheet of paper, and spent an hour.
Same lanes, same mare, same receipts. Which of them got his Thursdays back?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two tallow chandlers in the town I have never named, both with a shop on the same side street and the same Thursday round.

It was a handsome round on the face of it. Out at six with the cart loaded, seven miles of lane up on to the high ground, candles and rushlights and a cask of soap to a dozen farms and three hamlets, home by dark with four pounds in his pocket and a cheese.

The first chandler ran that round for eleven years without once working out what it earned him.

He was not an idle man, nor a stupid one. He could cost a hundredweight of tallow in his head. The arithmetic was not beyond him. It was only that the question, which rose in him often enough, rose at wrong moments: in February with the lane frozen and the mare down on her knees, or on the evening the boy asked for another shilling. Each time he told himself the round about paid for itself, that it kept his name up on the high ground, and that he would look at it properly when the dipping was slack. The dipping was never slack. He was going up that hill at sixty, with a boy he could not afford and a mare he could not retire.

The second chandler had the same round and the same suspicion, and for three years the same habit of putting it off. What broke it was a lame mare and a wet morning. He could not go up, the shop was quiet, and he had an hour and a candle, which a chandler always has.

Before he added anything up he wrote two lines at the top of the sheet, and those two lines are the whole of this letter. The first said what he expected the round to earn for a day of his own labour. He put four shillings. The second said what he would do at each answer. Above six shillings, keep it weekly. Between three and six, go fortnightly and ask the two big farms for a standing order. Below three, send the goods by carrier.

Then he counted. The receipts were easy, since he had always marked round orders with a cross in the day book: forty-six pounds in the year, the figure he had been comforting himself with. Against it he set only what the round itself caused. The boy's day. The mare's keep and shoeing, and three parts of the cartwright's bill, which was that stony lane. The candles given about to keep people sweet. The shop shut on the best market afternoon of the week. And his own fifty-two days.

The round cleared nine pounds and some shillings, which over fifty-two days was three shillings and fourpence for a day of his time, against seven shillings at his own vats. He had been paying for the pleasure of being known on the high ground.

Because the rule was written before the answer appeared, he could not argue with it, though he wanted to. The round went fortnightly, the two big farms took a standing quantity, the rest went up with the carrier at a penny a parcel. He got back some thirty days in the year and put them into a wholesale order for a shipping chandler at the river, worth in time more than the hill.

He did not stop the round, and that is the fair part of it. Two of his best town customers had first found him on that road. The hill was not worthless. It was worth about a fifth of what it felt worth, and nobody had set the feeling beside a figure.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The figure you have not worked out is one you have already guessed, and the guess is doing the deciding. The first chandler did not lack the arithmetic. He lacked the willingness to be told. Not knowing was doing a job for him: it let the round go on, and a thing that goes on does not have to be defended.

Notice where the reluctance sits. Never on the counting, which costs an hour and a sheet of paper, but on what the answer would oblige you to do. The round, the awkward customer, the line of goods you keep on, the Saturday opening: the uncounted parts of a trade are not a random selection. They are the ones where you suspect the answer and would find it inconvenient. The arithmetic is not what is avoided. The decision is, and the missing figure is the excuse for not making it.

The longer a thing runs, the more reasons it collects that are not arithmetic. It keeps the name about. The men up there would be let down. And heaviest of all, eleven years would have to have been a mistake, which is the old error of letting time and money already spent vote on the decision in front of you. They get no vote. The question is not what the round has cost you. It is what next Thursday is worth.

Two things make the hour bearable, and both are done before you add anything up. Write your guess first. That turns the hour into a test of your judgement rather than a verdict on your trade, and the gap between guess and answer tells you how far to trust your sense of what you have not counted. It is the discipline we urged on you in the matter of counting a fortnight of your own hours rather than describing them. Then write the rule, also before the answer appears: what you will do at six shillings, at four, at two. Decide afterwards and you will haggle with your own sums, discovering that the year was unusual, that the mare was old anyway, that next spring will be different. A figure has no power over a man free to meet it with a reason.

Two cautions. Count only what you would act on, since an hour spent proving that a thing you will never change loses two pounds a year is a pleasant evening and nothing more. And count honestly on both sides. Charge the round with what the round causes and not with rent you would pay anyway, and credit it with gains that are real but awkward to value: the customers who found you there, the work that comes because the cart is seen. Where those are large, change by halves rather than sell the cart in a fit of arithmetic.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What do I describe as about paying for itself? That phrase and its cousins, it washes its face, it more or less covers the man, are receipts for uncounted figures. Write down every part of your trade you defend in those words.
2. What would the answer oblige me to do? Take the item on that list you are least comfortable thinking about, since discomfort is the surest sign you already suspect the answer, and write what you will do at three levels of it before adding up a penny.
3. What is the cheapest honest count? Not a new system of books. A year of the day book, an hour, one sheet of paper, and only the costs the thing itself causes. Rough and this week beats exact and never.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of them got his Thursdays back?

The second, and he got them back in an hour. Both had the same lanes and the same receipts, and either could have done the sum in a wet morning. One did it, and having written beforehand what each answer would oblige him to do, could not talk himself out of it. The other kept the comfort of not knowing, and paid nine pounds a year for that comfort, eleven years together.

The difference was not arithmetic. It was the willingness to be told.

The verse:

I would not do the sum because
I knew what it would say;
and so I kept the lane, the mare,
the boy, and paid their way.

Until next time. Go and write down the part of your trade you call about paying for itself, the figure you expect it to come to, and the hour this week you will spend finding out.

P.S. The same reluctance has a second home, which is your own working day. Most men can say what their best customer is worth, and not one in ten what an hour of their own time earns across a year. Take a year of takings, subtract what you paid out, divide by the hours you actually worked, and keep that figure by you. Every request to do a thing for nothing is priced by it afterwards.

Also in the archive: The Sacks He Counted, The Second Column and The Four Days Out of the Shop.