“Some time after my reception into the Church, I went to Bishop McCloskey and told him I had scruples against renting a seat in the Cathedral in Mott Street.  ‘If I do,’ I said, ’I shall feel sore at the thought that I have set apart for me in the house of God a seat which a poor man cannot use.’  I told him that for this reason I had knelt down near the doorway, among the crowd of transient poor people.  Oh, how he eased my spirit by sympathizing with my sentiment, and satisfied me by declaring that the renting of pews was only from necessity, and he wished we could get along without it.”

His relations with some of his former friends at Brook Farm still continued, though in a somewhat attenuated condition.  From a long and appreciative letter sent him by Burrill Curtis, we make an extract, followed by Isaac’s comments on it: 

“October 13, 1844.—­Your preparedness for any fate has been one of the chief attractions of your character to me, for I believe it is deeper than a mere state of mind.  But, for all that, your restlessness is uppermost just now; not as a contradictory element, for it is not; but as a discovering power.”

Isaac’s journal, just at this time, was chiefly devoted to what he calls “the many smaller, venial sins which beset my path and keep me down to earth.  Also to prescribe such remedies as may seem to me best for these thorns in the flesh.”  On October 26 he notes that he has received the letter just quoted, and remarks: 

“It showed more regard for me than I thought he had.  The truth is, I do not feel myself worthy to be the friend of any one, and would pass my life in being a friend to all, without recognizing their friendship towards me.

“To-day I have felt more humanly tender than ever.  The past has come
up before me with much emotion. ----- has been much in my thoughts.

“I have experienced those unnatural feelings which I have felt heretofore.  I feel that the spirit world is near and glimmering all around me.  The nervous shocks I have been subject to, but which I have not experienced for some time back, recurred this evening.  I am known to spirits, or else I apprehend them.”

He had taken up Latin and Greek again, and seems to have entered a class of young men under the tutorship of a Mr. Owen.  The entry just quoted from goes on as follows: 

“I do not devote as much time to study as I should, or as I might.  I fear I shall never make anything of my studies.  I do not endeavor with all my might.  This study has thrown me into another sphere.  I like it not.  I feel apprehensive of something, of somewhat.  Ten years from now will fix my destiny, if I have any.”

Much good as he continued to receive from the sacrament of penance, he found a not altogether usual difficulty in preparing for it.  Perhaps it was in the counsel he received there that he got courage to gird himself for his renewed attack upon the languages, for his delinquencies in this respect have the air of being the most tangible of the matters on his conscience.