“Jesus came to restore man to that eternal day from which Adam fell.”

About this time he mentions having spent a day in the woods with some friends, at Fort Lee; it is the only allusion we find to any sort of recreation or companionship with others.  He sat alone for an hour, he says, in a pleasant spot which overlooked the Hudson and the high Palisade rocks, and “seemed to be in communion with the infinite invisible all around in all the deep avenues of the soul.”

Four days before his baptism comes this anticipation of it: 

“New York, July 27, ’44.—­I have commenced acting.  My union with the Catholic Church is my first real, true act.  And it is no doubt the forerunner of many more—­of an active life.  Heretofore I did not see or feel in me the grounds upon which I could act with permanence and security.  I now do; and on this basis my future life will be built.  What my actions may be, I care not.  It was this deep eternal certainty within I did wish to feel, and I am now conscious that the lack of it was the reason for my inactivity.

“With this guide I ask no other, nor do I feel the need of the support of friends, or kindred, or the world.  Alone it is sufficient for me, though it contradicts the advice of my friends and all my former life.  It certainly seems to me absolute:  if any error arises it will be from my disobedience.”

“July 30.—­The inward voice becomes more and more audible.  It says:  ‘I am—­obey!’

“The new clothes itself in new dress.

“What proof does a man give that he is if he does only what has been done?

“Can a man repeat the past with genius?

“One true act opens the passage to ten more.

“Man is left to his own destiny; religion but sanctifies it.”

When the day comes at last, the Sacrament itself gets only the briefest chronicle.  The door seems but a door.  Passing through it, he finds himself at home, and apparently without one quickening of the pulse, or any cessation of his desire to penetrate all its secret chambers.  The explanation of this is to be looked for in the presumption that his baptism in infancy had been valid.  It was conferred by a Lutheran minister who must have been trained in Germany, and whose methodical adherence to the proper form might be counted on.  In the sight of God, doubtless, he had never since been outside the Church.  He was like a child stolen from the cradle, but in whom racial and family traits had been superior to an uncongenial environment.

“Friday, August 1, 1844, 1 P.M.—­This morning we were baptized by Bishop McCloskey.  To-morrow we attend the tribunal of confession.”

Then he mentions a curious fact which recalls a similar experience of St. Catherine of Genoa:  “We know not why it is we feel an internal necessity of using the plural pronoun instead of the singular.”

But if conditional baptism left him silent, the Sacrament he certainly received the following day opened the flood-gates of his speech: