Every day seemed to bring a new "eccentric" to join our colony. 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....
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.'"