I have
hardly begun to enumerate the prime ones, yet....
But when I returned to the little settlement a curious man had already
established himself ... one who was called by Spalton, in tender
ridicule, Gabby Jack ... that was Spalton's nickname for him ... and it
stuck, because it was so appropriate. Jack was a pilgrim in search of
Utopia. And he was straightway convinced, wholly and completely, that
he had found it in Eos. To him Spalton was the one and undoubted prophet
of God, the high priest of Truth.
Gabby Jack was a "j'iner." From his huge, ornate, gold watch-chain hung
three or four bejewelled insignia of secret societies that he was a
member of. He wore a flowered waistcoat ... an enormous seal-ring,
together with other rings.
He had laid aside a competence, by working his way from journeyman
carpenter to an independent builder of frame houses, in some thriving
town in the Middle West ... where, in his fifty-fifth year, he had
received the call to go forth in quest of the Ideal, the One Truth.
His English was a marvel of ignorant ornateness, like his vest and his
watch-chain and rings. He had, apparently, no family ties. Spalton
became his father, his mother, his brother, his sister, almost his God.
There was nothing the Master said or did that was not perfect ... he
would stand with worship and adoration written large on his swarthy,
great face, listening to Spalton's most trivial words.
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