...
Otherwise, he was Gabby Jack ... talking ... talking ... talking ...
with everybody he met ... enquiring ... questioning ... taking notes in
a large, crude, misspelling hand ... trying himself to write....
We ran away from him ... Spalton ran away from him ... "this fellow will
be the death of me," he remarked to me, one afternoon, with a light of
pleasure and pride in his eyes, however, at being so worshipped. "Ah,
Razorre, beware of the ignorant disciple!"
There was nothing Jack would not do for Spalton. He sought out
opportunities and occasions for serving him.
And he would guide visitors over the establishment. And, coming to the
office where Spalton usually sat and worked, he was heard to say once,
with a wide-spread, reverential sweep of the hand--"and this, ladies and
gents, is the (his voice dropping to a reverential whisper) 'Sancta
Sanctoria.'"
Jack could not see so well with one eye as he could with the other. A
cataract was there which gave that eye the appearance of a
milky-coloured, poached egg....
Coming home from Buffalo one evening, he stepped down on the wrong side
of the train, in the dusk ... perhaps from his eagerness to sit by his
prophet at supper again that night--there being too long a line leaving
at the station, ahead of him.
A freight was drawing out on the track opposite. And Gabby was so huge
that he was rolled like a log in a jam, between the two moving trains
.
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