“DEAR MOTHER:  There have been times when, considering the wickedness of the world, sensible of its miseries and my own, and at the same time beholding obscurely and as it were tasting the things of heaven, I have longed and wished to be separated from the body.  But when coming back to myself, and thinking that with the aid of grace I can still increase in God’s love and hence love Him still more in consequence for all eternity, I feel willing to love and suffer until the last day, if by this I should acquire but one drop more of Divine love in my heart.  And so it is, as St. Paul declares, that we should count the trials here as nothing compared with the glory that awaits us.  Now, all these considerations, dear mother, join together to increase my desire to see you in the communion of the Holy Catholic Church, to which God has singularly given so many means of growing in grace,” etc., etc.

Notwithstanding these marks of active intelligence, Brother Hecker could not study, except by fits and starts.  Often he could not get through the common prayers, and in ordinary conversation his tongue would sometimes be tangled among the words of a sentence before he was half through with it.  The reader has already learned that the penalties of utter stupidity were not unknown to the unwritten law of the Wittem studentate, notwithstanding that the young men were devout religious; and hence Brother Hecker must have had many hours of anguish.  But we cannot suppose that his native cheerfulness was quite suppressed.  His dulness of mind was accompanied, or rather was the result of, the close embraces of Divine love.  It was the bitter part of that intimate communion with God which is granted to chosen souls.  No doubt he was profoundly humiliated by the disgrace involved in his failure to study, but he was willing to suffer that external degradation which was the complement of and the means of emphasizing, the teaching of the Holy Spirit in his interior, as well as the means of purifying his soul more and more perfectly.  In after years he related an instance of his lightness of heart, a natural quality which he shared with his companion, Brother Walworth.  The bishop of some neighboring diocese, Aix-la-chapelle, if we remember rightly, happening to visit the house at Wittem, was told of the two American students.  He conversed with them in the recreation, the language being French.  Then he said:  “I know how to read English, but I have never heard it spoken; can you not speak a little piece for me?” “Certainly,” was the answer.  After a moment’s consultation the two young men in all seriousness recited together “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” etc.  No wonder that the prelate was astonished at the peculiar sound of English.  Then he asked them for a song.  “Oh of course,” was the answer, and they sang in unison “The Carrion Crow,” with full chorus and imitations.

Besides taking care of the sick, for which he was admirably fitted by nature, Brother Hecker made himself generally useful about the house.  He spent much time working among the brothers in the kitchen, and the writer has heard him say that for nearly the whole of his stay in Wittem he baked the bread of the entire community.  He also carried in the fuel for the house, using a crate or hod hoisted on his back.