Herb’s table was much longer than the old one. At the head, in place of the sliding door, was a cylinder with an opening in one side of approximately the same dimensions as the opening behind the old door. A crank allowed the doorman to turn this cylinder. As the opening rotated past the opening to the clam bin, the cylinder filled with clams, and, as the opening rotated over the table, the clams tumbled from the cylinder onto the table. The doorman could vary the rate of rotation to suit the pace of the cullers. The table was slanted so that the clams would be inclined to slide toward the far end. Herb and Swifty had carved the surface to create a system of valleys, through which the clams could be urged, by the cullers, to go. From the largest valley, at the head of the table, the clams might, with the assistance of the first group of cullers, pass into either of two smaller valleys, and then, from each of those, with the assistance of the next rank of cullers, into either of two still smaller valleys. The cullers used this system of branching valleys to sort the clams into their four sizes: undersize (that is, too small to sell legally), littleneck, cherrystone, and chowder clam. The system had the great virtue of allowing the use of apprentice cullers at the head of the line, since they merely had to distinguish the relatively smaller clams from the relatively larger clams. The more seasoned cullers who were stationed farther along made the subtler distinctions, and they did it with little wasted motion, merely nudging the clams a little to guide each into the proper valley. Toward the end, the table fanned out, and the valleys diverged, each ending above a crate, into which the clams tumbled fairly gently.
When Garth Castle saw the new table in operation, he was astonished as much by the fact that Herb had undertaken its design and construction for pleasure as he was by the results. Here was someone out of the ordinary. He was impressed, too, by the ease with which Herb had gotten Swifty to build the table, working after hours, and by the cooperation he got from the cullers, who were generally considered to be a hidebound lot, resistant to change, second only to the clammies themselves in stubbornness. Here was a leader. Garth offered Herb the foremanship of the culling section. Herb asked instead that Garth arrange for him to move into sales. And, as if it were an afterthought, he asked that Garth set aside for his exclusive use the area of the workshop where he had developed the culling table, so that he could tinker. It was there, in an hour or two after work, any afternoon when he could spare the time, that Herb developed the prototypes of the Watchcase Wonders.
Herb’s moving into sales had a painful consequence, though: he had to be away from Babbington, and Lorna, for days (and sometimes for weeks) at a time. As soon as he had experienced the first of these separations, he began racking his brain for a way to get out of traveling. He had wanted the job for only one reason: to earn himself a reputation. He had imagined that a year or so traveling for Babbington Clam wouldn’t be so bad, but he’d found instead that to be without Lorna was to be in an almost constant state of need. When he was away he seemed to lack everything. No matter what he ate or how much he ate, he was hungry; when he woke in the night and his mouth was dry, the water he drank didn’t quench his thirst any more than do those glasses of water we drink in our dreams; boredom and loneliness sent him to bed early, but he never seemed to get enough sleep; and, without Lorna, he sometimes felt cold, especially at the tips of his fingers and across his shoulders, even in the warmest weather.
“How, how?” he asked himself, again and again, when he lay awake on lonely nights in half-empty beds in faraway places. How could he get out of this misery he’d brought himself? He couldn’t quit so soon; he’d appear unreliable, disloyal, fickle. He couldn’t use the truth as a reason. Love and loneliness weren’t suitable reasons for a man to abandon a job that was a step up, especially not when he was performing so brilliantly that he’d attracted the attention of everyone who had the power to improve his future.
In Topical Guide 310, Mark Dorset considers Sorting: Techniques, Algorithms, Devices from this episode.
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🎧 310: Herb’s table . . .