devotion to their high ideal, the absence of meanness, coarseness,
vulgarity, the sinking of private ambitions, the patience with the
defects of others, their desire to establish the communism of at
least intellectual gifts--all this and much more of the kind fixed
his views and affections in a mould which eminently fitted him as a
vessel of election for apostolic uses.

Before passing to the study of Isaac Hecker's own interior during the
period of his residence at Brook Farm, it is our pleasant privilege
to communicate to our readers the subjoined charming reminiscence of
his personality at the time, from one who was his associate there:

"West New Brighton, S.I., February 28, 1890.--DEAR SIR: I fear that
my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you,
for they are very scant. But the impression of the young man whom I
knew at Brook Farm is still vivid. It must have been in the year 1843
that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston. He was a youth
of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat
seamed with small-pox. But his sweet and candid expression, his
gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of
singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager
inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him
that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of
mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in the
_Dial._

"Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had
apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the
intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him
in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember