"The time in my whole life when I felt I had gained the greatest victory by self-exertion was when, after weeks of labor, I was able to recite the Pater Noster in Latin.
"My memory finally failed me in my studies to that degree that at last I took all my books up-stairs to the library and told the prefect of studies I could do no more to acquire knowledge by study.
"Question. How long were you unable to study? Answer. Two years in Holland and one year in England. I never went to class those years. I was a kind of a scandal, of course, in the house. When I got a lucid interval of memory I studied, though much of the time I hadn't a book in my room. Yet, when they came to ordain me, I knew enough and was sent at once to the work of the ministry."
That his stupidity was not blameworthy is shown by the sympathy of Isaac's superiors; that it was not natural is known to our readers by their acquaintance with his native ability exhibited in his journals and letters. The difficulty was confined almost wholly to study; to fix his attention on the matter in the text-books, or to grasp it and hold it in memory, was beyond his power. Meantime his letters to his friends in New York and elsewhere were full of life. He kept a copy of a carefully written one, addressed to an old-time friend of the Brook Farm community. It is a model of brief statement of great truths, and proves that the social difficulty can only be fully remedied by the Catholic Church, which has an elevating force incomparably more powerful than any other known to humanity. The method used and the choice of arguments are peculiarly Isaac Hecker's own, and the tone, though affectionate, is one of authority, as that of an exponent of evident truth. His letters to his mother and his brothers are full of controversy, abounding in appeals to Scripture, to the voice of conscience, to the dictates of reason; and although the tone is one of deep affection, the attacks on Protestantism are keen, and the use of facts and persons as illustrations full of intelligence. Most of the letters which we have found were addressed to his mother, for whose conversion he had an ardent longing. With one of them he sends her a little manuscript treatise on true Bible Christianity which he had himself prepared. We give the reader extracts from two letters, the first from one to his brother John and the second from one to his mother:
"Your lamentation, dear John, on my separation from you, excites in me a great astonishment. To justify this separation it seems to me that you have only to open a page of the Gospels of Christ, and to read it with a sincere belief in the words and a generous love of the Saviour. As for me, I regret nothing so much as that I have not a thousand lives to sacrifice to His service and love. Yes, I love you all more than I ever did, and I would count nothing as a cost for your present and eternal good. Yet, by the grace of God, I love my Saviour infinitely, infinitely, infinitely more. Alas! when will those who profess to be Christians learn the significance of Christ's Gospels and His blessed example. I am not ignorant nor insensible of the love we owe to our parents and relatives—no, I am not insensible of this love; but in me it is all in Christ, as I would wish yours were. . . . I embrace you, dear brother, in the love of our crucified Lord."
"DEAR MOTHER: There have been times when, considering the wickedness of the world, sensible of its miseries and my own, and at the same time beholding obscurely and as it were tasting the things of heaven, I have longed and wished to be separated from the body. But when coming back to myself, and thinking that with the aid of grace I can still increase in God's love and hence love Him still more in consequence for all eternity, I feel willing to love and suffer until the last day, if by this I should acquire but one drop more of Divine love in my heart. And so it is, as St. Paul declares, that we should count the trials here as nothing compared with the glory that awaits us. Now, all these considerations, dear mother, join together to increase my desire to see you in the communion of the Holy Catholic Church, to which God has singularly given so many means of growing in grace," etc., etc.
Notwithstanding these marks of active intelligence, Brother Hecker could not study, except by fits and starts. Often he could not get through the common prayers, and in ordinary conversation his tongue would sometimes be tangled among the words of a sentence before he was half through with it. The reader has already learned that the penalties of utter stupidity were not unknown to the unwritten law of the Wittem studentate, notwithstanding that the young men were devout religious; and hence Brother Hecker must have had many hours of anguish. But we cannot suppose that his native cheerfulness was quite suppressed. His dulness of mind was accompanied, or rather was the result of, the close embraces of Divine love. It was the bitter part of that intimate communion with God which is granted to chosen souls. No doubt he was profoundly humiliated by the disgrace involved in his failure to study, but he was willing to suffer that external degradation which was the complement of and the means of emphasizing, the teaching of the Holy Spirit in his interior, as well as the means of purifying his soul more and more perfectly. In after years he related an instance of his lightness of heart, a natural quality which he shared with his companion, Brother Walworth. The bishop of some neighboring diocese, Aix-la-chapelle, if we remember rightly, happening to visit the house at Wittem, was told of the two American students. He conversed with them in the recreation, the language being French. Then he said: "I know how to read English, but I have never heard it spoken; can you not speak a little piece for me?" "Certainly," was the answer. After a moment's consultation the two young men in all seriousness recited together "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," etc. No wonder that the prelate was astonished at the peculiar sound of English. Then he asked them for a song. "Oh of course," was the answer, and they sang in unison "The Carrion Crow," with full chorus and imitations.
Besides taking care of the sick, for which he was admirably fitted by nature, Brother Hecker made himself generally useful about the house. He spent much time working among the brothers in the kitchen, and the writer has heard him say that for nearly the whole of his stay in Wittem he baked the bread of the entire community. He also carried in the fuel for the house, using a crate or hod hoisted on his back.
In August, 1848, Brother Walworth was ordained priest, and it was decided that he and Brother Hecker, together with two young Belgian priests, Fathers Teunis and Lefevre, should proceed to England, the Redemptorists having been recently introduced there. As the cassock is not worn in the streets in England they were sent from Wittem to Liège and there equipped with clerical suits, the tailor being cautioned not to be too ecclesiastical in the cut of the garments. He produced a ridiculous compromise between a fashionable frock-coat and a cassock, the waist being high and tight and the tails full and flowing, and flopping about the young clerics' heels. As they journeyed from Liège to Amsterdam, and thence to London, people stopped and stared at them in their stylish array, and some laughed at them. In this instance Brother Hecker's chagrin was not overcome by his sense of the ludicrous, for he was naturally very sensitive of personal unbecomingness, and although not precisely a martinet for clerical exactness, he had strict notions of propriety.
The new Redemptorist foundation was at Clapham, three miles south of London Bridge. The house was a large, old-fashioned mansion and had been owned by Lord Teignmouth, a notorious anti-Catholic bigot. Some of the larger rooms had been thrown together into one, and this was used temporarily as a public chapel. Just as the young Redemptorists arrived, Father Petcherine was preaching to the congregation. He was a Russian convert, and the new-comers were astonished at his good English and his eloquence. He was one of the many extraordinary men who adorned the order at that time. He was master not only of his native tongue, but of English, German, Italian, French, and modern Greek, and could preach well in all of these languages. Clapham was reached on September 23, 1848, and shortly afterwards Father Walworth was sent to do missionary as well as parish work in Worcestershire, and remained there the greater part of the two years which were spent by our Americans in England.