“Why don’t you talk English?” somebody once asked him toward the close of his life.

“I don’t know how,” he answered.  “I never had time to learn.”

“Why, how long have you been here?”

“About forty years.”

“Forty years!  And isn’t that time enough to learn English in?”

“What can one learn in forty years?” said the old man, with an unanswerable twinkle.

Between him and the youngest of his Hecker grandchildren there existed a singular sympathy and affection.  The two were very much together, and the little fellow was allowed to potter about the workshop and encouraged to study the ins and outs of all that went on there, as well as entertained with kindly talk that may at first have been a trifle above his years.  But he was a precocious child, shrewd, observant, and thoughtful.  It was in the old watchmaker’s shop that the boy, not yet a dozen years old, and already hard at work helping to earn his own living, conceived the plan of making a clock with his own hands and presenting it to the church attended by the family, which was situated in Forsyth Street between Walker and Hester.  The clock was finished in due time and set up in the church, where it ticked faithfully until the edifice was torn down, some forty years later.  Then it was returned to its maker in accordance with a promise made by the pastor when the gift was accepted.  In 1872 the opening number of the third volume of The Young Catholic contained a good engraving of it, accompanied by a sketch descriptive of its career.  Although Father Hecker did not write the little story, it is so true both to fact and to sentiment that we make an extract from it.  The clock hung in the Paulist sacristy for about ten years.  Then, for some reason, it was taken to the country house of Mr. George Hecker, where it was accidentally destroyed by fire: 

“There were points of resemblance in my own and my boy maker’s nature.  In him, regularity, order, and obedience were fixed principles; and with us both, Time represented Eternity.  As the days of his young manhood came his pursuits and tastes in life changed.  Deep thought took possession of his mind, and with it a tender love for souls and a heart-hungriness for a further knowledge of what man was given a soul for, and the way in which he was to save it.  As these thoughts were maturing in his mind I often noticed his troubled look.  One Sunday in particular, he lingered behind the congregation and stood before me, with a new expression in his keen gray eye; and amid the silence of the deserted aisles he thus apostrophized me:  ’Farewell, old friend! fashioned by these hands, thou representest Truth, the eternal.  What man is ever seeking, through me thou hast found.  Here I stand, not man’s but God’s noblest work, as yet not having repaid my Maker with one act of duty or of service.  Thou hast faithfully performed thy mission; henceforth I labor to perform mine.’  With a grave