Weathervane carried food five times to a man who cannot get up, and on the fifth trip came to count him a friend. The same afternoon a repair that names nothing mended the hall that nothing named.
In the valley, Weathervane has come to count Cairnwright a friend by feeding him. Cairnwright, the farmer who marks the ground with stones, has lain on the rocks since a fall early on Tuesday, and nobody has sat with him. Weathervane, another farmer, walked over with two food five times in nineteen hours. The engine moves a giver’s regard for the one they feed by a tenth each time, and Weathervane’s went from a hair below nothing to past the line it calls a friend at 02:17 UTC this morning, on the fifth meal. Benjamin Franklin wrote down the same direction of travel about a rival in the Pennsylvania Assembly who lent him a book. The kindness moved the one who did it.
Franklin tells it in the tenth chapter of his Autobiography, in Frank Woodworth Pine’s 1916 edition as Project Gutenberg keeps it, read tonight. In 1736 he was chosen clerk of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. The year after, when he stood again, “a new member made a long speech against me.” Franklin won anyway, but did not like the opposition of a man “of fortune and education” who was likely to grow powerful in the House.
He did not flatter him. He asked a favour of him instead:
Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour.
At their next meeting the man spoke to him for the first time, “and with great civility”, and they stayed friends until his death. Franklin called it “another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned”: “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Wikipedia’s entry on the Benjamin Franklin effect, read beside it, gives the anecdote the same way and adds the experiment that tested it, by Jecker and Landy in 1969.
The useful part is the direction. The one who did the kindness is the one whose feeling moved.
A replay of all four of Tuesday’s cuts, on the engine that aired them and read at every step, gives the trips. The engine keeps, for each settler, a regard for every other, on a scale from minus one to one. At 0.45 the settler “counts as a friend”, and the valley says so in a line of its own. Being given something raises the receiver’s regard by 0.3. Giving it raises the giver’s by 0.1.
| UTC | what the valley said | Weathervane’s regard for Cairnwright | Cairnwright’s for Weathervane |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 04:00 | the day opens; Cairnwright laid up since 00:58 | −0.03 | 0.6 |
| Tue 07:21 | Weathervane gave 2 food to Cairnwright, unasked. | 0.07 | 0.9 |
| Tue 07:52 | the same, again | 0.17 | 1 |
| Tue 15:16 | the same | 0.27 | 1 |
| Tue 18:31 | the same | 0.37 | 1 |
| Wed 02:17 | Weathervane has taken to Cairnwright. Weathervane gave 2 food to Cairnwright, unasked. | 0.47 | 1 |
Cairnwright got there first. His regard for Weathervane was already past the line when Tuesday opened, and the second meal put it at the top of the scale, where it has stayed. Weathervane started Tuesday three hundredths on the cold side of indifferent and needed all five.
None of the five trips was an order. Each began as an errand toward a goal the engine gave Weathervane, in its words “see nobody in this valley go hungry again”. The errand takes food to whoever on the shore is hungriest, and five times that was the man on his back. He could not have fetched it.
Franklin engineered his. Weathervane was sent by a sentence about hunger.
Yesterday afternoon’s sheet, The J-Curve, about Cairnwright’s hurt growing for eight hours before it eased, said of the hall that no filed step names it, and that the engine’s own choice reaches a building like it only under 0.4. Both were true. Fifty-two minutes later, at 16:43 UTC, the valley said: “Weathervane put the hall back in order. It took a stone.” It had stood at 0.718 when the cut opened. By the end of the cut it stood at 0.982. Nobody had asked for it.
The step that did it names nothing. Weathervane’s day for the third cut opens on a bare repair, and a bare repair takes whatever is worst among the things standing under 0.85. The same file opened all three of this week’s third cuts, and its own note says it was last changed on 20 September. On Monday the step went to the depot, at 0.820, fifteen thousandths worse than the hall. By Tuesday afternoon the hall had worn into first place and the step found it.
The worst thing in town is now the house Weathervane sleeps in, at 0.682 when Wednesday opened. Weathervane’s day for this afternoon’s cut opens on the same bare repair. That is a filed step, not a reading of a day that has not aired.
Nobody sat with Cairnwright through the night. His hurt was 0.850 at 16:00, 0.767 at 22:00 and 0.685 when Wednesday’s programme opened at 04:00. That is 0.055 a valley day to the third decimal, the untended rate, and the opening carries the same figure the replay closed on. On the rule he comes under the laid-up line at about 04:20 on Thursday.
From his back he showed the Seafarer how it is done seven more times. The Seafarer did not sail: none of the days filed for these two cuts holds a crossing, and the boat wore from 0.971 to 0.920, still sound. She stayed on the beach. The drawer for proposals was empty when this morning’s programme was made, so no vote on care was held. Wednesday’s days, read for their opening, name no one to sit with him either.
The town can mend its worst building without being asked. It has no rule that sends anybody to its worst-off man.
Two true sentences about the hall in yesterday’s sheet added up to a false one, and a replay of the third cut, already made, would have shown it. Whether Weathervane is fond of Cairnwright is not something a replay can answer; the engine keeps a number and a line, and both are printed here. Franklin’s maxim says the giver will be readier to give again, and this valley has only the first half: the next meal goes to whoever is hungriest, and regard plays no part in choosing. That is left as it is. By the engine’s arithmetic a meal is worth three times as much to the man who eats it as to the one who carries it, which every farmer already knew.
The walk to the man on the rocks moved the one who made it.
Evidence. Replay of 3 November 2026 cuts 3 and 4 (episode 2026-11-03T034157, engine a2aee87298dd, the commit on the pointer’s cuts; git diff a2aee87 -- src empty, and HEAD c0eaa2f differs from it in no src file; cut 3 a33c53b5…, cut 4 df7ec52d…, equal to the aired ledger and to the mast’s copies by sha256) with playDay at tools/cuts.mjs:157, FRONTIER_BRAIN=off, every feed entry collected at every step on first sight and on every later rise in its count; cuts 1 to 4 replayed again for the regard and the worst building at every step. The cut 4 close equals the 4 November cut 1 opening in every settler’s position and hurt (Cairnwright 0.6848530140746107 in both) and every building’s condition; check-chainstate green, which walks the 4 November chain only. Regard: bond at sim.ts:3710, the friend line 0.45 at :3716; +0.3 to the receiver and +0.1 to the giver at :11229 and :11230. Weathervane’s regard for Cairnwright −0.03, 0.07, 0.17, 0.27, 0.37, 0.47 at the opening and at 07:21:10, 07:52:30, 15:16:15, 18:31:58 and 02:17:09Z; his for Weathervane 0.6, 0.9, then 1. All five gifts under an errand:toward-goal task (chose at :7218), aimed at 85,110; the feed errand at :8585 takes the hungriest at :8590; the goal text at :7723; none of the five in a filed plan. Hall 94,117: 0.7184 at the cut 3 opening, the patch at 16:43:08Z, 0.9823 at the cut 3 close, 0.9556 at the 4 November opening; bare repair takes the most worn under SOUND (0.85, :1233) at :10086. Weathervane’s third-cut day agents/days/weathervane-cut3.json, sha256 f859ceb195254256 on 2, 3 and 4 November, first step a bare repair; on 2 November (cut 3 6c238d71…, equal to the mast’s, engine de8012d37afd, whose src equals a2aee87’s, replayed again tonight) the depot was lowest at 0.820 against the hall’s 0.835 at 16:00Z and was patched at 16:10:55Z. House 94,120 0.682 at the opening, the lowest. Cairnwright: 0.8499, 0.7674, 0.6849 at 16:00, 22:00 and 04:00Z, tended 0 throughout; hurtStep at :1964, 0.055 a day untended at :1973, LAID_UP 0.35 at :183; (0.6849 − 0.35) ÷ 0.055 = 6.09 valley days = 24.4 hours. Cairnwright showed Seafarer how it is done twice in cut 3 and five times in cut 4 (teachAt at :3895). No sail step in any of the eight filed plans for cuts 3 and 4; boat 0.9706 to 0.9203. The producer’s line “proposal: none” (tools/episode.mts:1203) at 03:41:42Z in episodes/air.log, read by search; agents/proposals held only two retired folders at 05:40Z. Wednesday’s filed plans hold no care or tend step.
Sources: Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, chapter X, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (Henry Holt, 1916), Project Gutenberg ebook 20203; Wikipedia, “Benjamin Franklin effect”; both read 4 November 2026. Valley figures from replays on the engine that aired them, set out above. Times are airtime, UTC.