“How hard it has been for me to go through with all these solemn mysteries and ceremonies without experiencing any of those great delights which I have [before] felt.  Why is this?  Is it to try my faith?  O Lord! how long shall I be tried in this season of desolation?  Are these [delights] never to return?  Have I acted unworthily?  What shall I do to receive these blessings again?”

Then he resolves to make a novena, fasting the while on bread and water, to entreat their renewal.  But at once a better mood sets in and he adds: 

“The highest state of perfection is to be content to be nothing.  Lord, give me strength not to ask of Thee anything that is pleasant to me.  I renounce what I have just asked for, and will try to do all without the hope of recompense.  If Thou triest my soul, let it not go until it has paid the uttermost farthing.”

“August 15, 1844.—­To-day is the holyday of the Assumption of the dear, Blessed Mary, Mother of our Lord and Saviour Jesus.  Oh! may I be found worthy of her regard and love.”

“He that has not learned the bitterness of the drops of woe has not learned to live.  One hour of deep agony teaches man more love and wisdom than a whole long life of happiness. . .

“In many faces I see passing through the crowded streets there seems a veiled beauty, an angel quickening me with purer life as I go by them in anxious haste.  Do we not see the hidden worth, glory, and beauty of others as our own becomes revealed to us?  Would the Son of God have been needed to ransom man if he were not of incomparable value?”

One of the dreams that at this time occupied Isaac’s mind was that of undertaking a pilgrimage to Rome.  He wrote to Henry Thoreau, proposing that they should go in company, and felt regret when his invitation was not accepted.  His notion was to “work, beg, and travel on foot, so far as land goes, to Rome.  I know of no pleasanter, better way, both for soul and body, than to make such a pilgrimage in the old, middle-age fashion; to suffer hunger, storm, cold, heat—­all that can affect the body of flesh.  If we receive hard usage, so much the better will it be for us.  Why thump one’s own flesh here?  Let it be done for us by others, our soul, meanwhile, looking at higher objects. . . .  I feel that I have the stuff to do it in me.  I would love to work and beg my way to Rome if it cost me ten or fifteen years of my life.”

Thoreau replied to this proposal that such a tour had been one of his own early dreams, but that he had outlived it.  He had now “retired from all external activity in disgust, and his life was more Brahminical, Artesian-well, Inner-Temple like.”  So the scheme, which had secured Bishop McCloskey’s approbation, although he had forcibly represented to young Hecker that to go absolutely destitute of money, and dependent for all things upon alms, would be impossible, was presently shelved.  It was but one of the diversions with which certain souls,