Such instruction as Isaac obtained before beginning to earn his own bread was given him in Ward School No. 7.  A Dr. Kirby was then its principal, and the time was just previous to the introduction of the present system.  The schools were not entirely free, a small payment being required from the parents for each pupil, to supplement the grant of public funds.  No doubt the boy, who had an ardent thirst for knowledge, regretted his removal from his desk more deeply than he was at the time willing to express.  Still, it may be questioned whether he ever had any natural aptitude for close, continuous book-work, at least on ordinary and prescribed lines.  He was “always studying,” indeed, as he sometimes said in speaking of his early life, but the thoughts of other men, whether written or spoken, do not seem to have been greatly valued by him, except as keys which might help him to unlock those mysteries of God and man, and their mutual relations, which tormented him from the first.  He was to the last an indefatigable reader, but yet it would be true to say that he was never either a student or a scholar in the ordinary sense.  It is a curious question as to how a thorough education might have modified Father Hecker.  It is possible—­nay, as the reader may be inclined to believe with us as the story of his inner life goes on, it is even probable—­that the more he was taught by God the less he was able to receive from men.

It is certain, however, that he seriously regretted and soon set himself to rectify the deficiencies of his early training.  This was one of the reasons which took him to Brook Farm.  In the first entry of the earliest of his diaries which has been preserved he thus speaks of his hidden longing after knowledge.  He was twenty-three when these sentences were written, and he had been at Brook Farm for several months: 

“If I cast a glance upon a few years of my past life, it appears to me mysteriously incomprehensible that I should be where I am now.  I confess sincerely that, although I have never labored for it, still, something in me always dreamed of it.  Once, when I was lying on the floor, my mother said to my brother John, without anything previously being spoken on the subject, and suddenly, in a kind of unconscious speech, ‘John, let Isaac go to college and study.’  These words went through me like liquid fire.  He made some evasive answer and there it ended.  Although to study has always been the secret desire of my heart from my youth, I never felt inclined to open my mind to any one on the subject.  And now I find, after a long time, that I have been led here as strangely as possible.”