Roger Tyss grew six years older and I can only charge it to the heedless eye of youth that I saw no signs of that aging. Like Pondible and, as I learned, so many members of the Grand Army, he wore a beard. His was closely trimmed, wiry and grizzled. Above the beard and across his forehead were many fine lines which always held some of the grime of the store or printing press. You did not dwell long on either beard or wrinkles however; what held you were his eyes: large, dark, fierce and compassionate. You might have dismissed him at first glance as simply an undersized, stoopshouldered, slovenly printer, had it not been for those eyes which seemed in perpetual conflict with his other features. “Robbed and bludgeoned, ay?” he said with a curious disrespect for sequence after Pondible had explained me to him. “Dog eats dog, and the survivors survive. Backmaker, ay? Is that an American name?” So far as I knew, I said, it was. “Well, well; let’s not pry too deeply. So you want to learn. Why?” “Why?” The question was too big for an answer, yet an answer of some kind was expected. “I guess because there’s nothing else so important.” “Wrong,” he said triumphantly, “wrong and illusory. Since nothing is ultimately important there can be no degrees involved. Books are the waste-product of the human mind.” “Yet you deal in them,” I ventured. “I’m alive and I shall die too; this doesnt mean I approve of either life or death. Well, if you are going to learn you are going to learn; there’s nothing I can do about it As well here as another place.” “Thank you, sir.” “Gratitude, Hodgins”—he never then nor later condescended to the familiar “Hodge” nor did I ever address or even think of him except as Mr Tyss—“Gratitude, Hodgins, is an emotion disagreeable both to the giver and to the receiver. We do what we must; gratitude, pity, love, hate, all that cant, is superfluous.” I considered this statement reflectively. “Look you,” he went on, “I’ll feed you and lodge you, teach you to set type and give you the run of the books. I’ll pay you no money; you can steal from me if you must You can learn as much here in four months as in a college in four years—if you persist in thinking it’s learning you want—or you can learn nothing. I’ll expect you to do the work I think needs doing; any time you don’t like it youre free to go.”