Two Letters on the Bench

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a horse collar was fitted to one animal and no other, and a collar that had ceased to fit would open a sore inside a fortnight.

Two collar makers in the town I have never named, the same rye straw and stitched hide, and the same thirty-five shillings a collar.
Both found the same two letters on the bench on the same Monday in October.
One ran to a page and a half, from a carrier with eight horses. One was three lines on a torn leaf.
One man gave his week to the page and a half, and closed the month with neither job.
One asked both writers the same short question, and had a horse back in the shafts by Friday.
Same letters, same straw, same thirty-five shillings. What did he ask?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Both worked the same slow way: rye straw packed by hand until it is as unyielding as a plank, covered in hide, stitched, then eased with a mallet to the shape of one living shoulder. A horse in a collar an inch out works all day and says nothing, and the shoulder tells you a fortnight later.

The letters were unalike. The carrier wrote a page and a half in a clerk's hand: eight horses on the town run, his supplier named, an enquiry as to terms and the allowance on a quantity. The farmer wrote three lines on a torn leaf asking what it would cost to see to a collar, and gave his lane.

The first collar maker knew at once which was the opportunity. He spent Tuesday evening on a careful reply to the carrier and drove six miles on the Thursday to be told the gentleman was out. To the farmer he sent a line: thirty-five shillings, and he would be glad to serve. In November the carrier thanked him and kept his figures by; the farmer never replied.

The second could not tell, so he asked. To the carrier he put one sentence: had something gone wrong with the collars he had, or was this for the coming year. Nothing had gone wrong, the clerk replied; they were drawing up next year's list and would settle after Christmas. Six civil lines went back with the prices, and a note into the book against January.

To the farmer he put the same sentence, and the answer came up the lane with a boy. A sore had opened ten days since on the near shoulder of the better of his two horses. The horse stood in the stable in the middle of the root carting, and a neighbour's was coming in at three shillings a day, wanted back on the Monday.

He drove out that afternoon. The collar was eight years old, made for a horse then four which now carried three stone less about the neck. It had not failed. The horse had changed, and the collar went on fitting the horse of eight years ago. He eased a loan collar on, measured for a new one, and looked at the other three collars while he was there, two of which were going the same way. The horse was in the shafts by Friday and four collars were on his books before spring.

The two letters had not changed. What one man had was the thing that had already happened.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A job that is really a job has something behind it that has already happened; ask what it was, and the enquiry will tell you whether it deserves your week. Enquiries do not arrive marked. They come in the same post, in the same words of politeness, and one is a job and one is a question.

The event first corrects your reading of the letter itself. We judge an enquiry by how well it is written and how much it appears to be worth, and both measure the leisure of the writer. The clerk had a page and a half to spare because nothing in that stable was wrong; the farmer wrote three lines because he stood in a yard with a lame horse and a hired one eating money. The badly written enquiry is often the only one with a date in it.

The second thing is better still. An event is a fact about the past, and people report the past accurately. Ask a man what he intends next spring and you get a hope, offered in good faith and worth little, as I set out in what a customer can and cannot tell you about himself. Ask what happened and you get the sore shoulder, the ten days, the three shillings.

Those facts also carry the two numbers the enquiry left out: the real deadline, which was the Monday the neighbour wanted his horse, and the real size, which was four collars and not one.

What of the enquiry with nothing behind it. Not a waste and not a liar: a job whose event has not happened yet. The carrier will buy collars from somebody in January. He wanted six lines, a price and a date in the book, which is the whole of what to do with the enquiry that is a not yet rather than a no. The error is giving him the Thursday that belonged to the lane.

Two cautions. The first is that an event need not be a disaster, and you must not go looking only for wreckage. A lease that turns at Michaelmas, a contract starting in March, an inspection already booked: each has happened in the sense that matters, being fixed and not in the writer's gift. You test not for pain but for whether anything has moved. The second caution is the real one. Having learned what a man's trouble costs him a week, the temptation is to price the trouble rather than the collar. Do not. You will get the thirty-five shillings and a half, and not the lane.

Three questions, for the enquiries on your bench this morning:

1. What has happened? Ask it in your first reply, of every enquiry without exception. Has something gone wrong with the one you have, or is this for later in the year. Write the answer on the enquiry itself in his own words, which are the words to quote back to him.
2. What is it costing him while it stands? Three shillings a day, a man idle, a room unlet, a fine running. If nothing runs, nothing is urgent, whatever either of you says. If something runs, that figure is your deadline and often why price was never the question.
3. Which of this week's enquiries has nothing behind it? Name them. They get a price, six civil lines and a date in the book. They do not get the journey or the evening, and withholding those is the discipline.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same letters, same straw, same thirty-five shillings. What did he ask?

He asked what had happened. One answered that nothing had, and got a price and a date. One answered with a sore shoulder, ten days and a borrowed horse, and got a Thursday afternoon. The first gave his week to the better letter, which is to say the one written by the man with time to write it.

The verse:

The neat enquiry on the bench was written at his leisure,
The torn leaf came from standing in a yard.
So ask them what has happened, for the past is told you plainly,
And the one with something in it is the one to take in hand.

Until next time. Go and write one line at the foot of every enquiry on your bench, naming what has already happened, and leave it blank where nothing has.

P.S. Keep those lines in a column for a twelvemonth and read down it. The same events repeat in the same months, troubles being governed by harvest and quarter day and the weather, not by you. A trade that has learned its calendar writes in the week before the shoulder opens.

Also in the archive: Away in April, One Pot in Seven and Aspirin and Vitamins.