Hecker.  This did not prevent his attempting the conversion of the boatswain, who seemed the only hopeful subject in the ship’s company.  There were a hundred and thirty steerage passengers, emigrants for the most part from Protestant countries, though a party of Garibaldian refugees and a few equally wild Frenchmen enlivened the monotony of sea-life by some bloody fights.  There were but two cabin passengers besides the Redemptorists, and the former being confined to their staterooms by nearly continual sea-sickness, the cabin was turned into a “floating convent,” to borrow Father Dold’s expression in a long letter descriptive of the voyage, given by Canon Claessens in his Life of Father Bernard.

The wintry and stormy voyage had already tested the missionaries’ patience for some weeks, when Father Bernard informed the captain that he and his companions were going to make a novena to St. Joseph to arrive at New York on or before his feast, March the 19th.  “St. Joseph will have to do his very prettiest to get us in,” was the answer.  And when the ship was still far to the east, being off the banks, and the weather quite unfavorable, and only three days left before the feast, the captain called out:  “St. Joseph can’t do it—­give it up, Father Bernard.”  But the latter would still persevere; and that night the wind changed.  The Yankee ship now flew along at the rate of fourteen miles an hour.  When the eve of St. Joseph’s Day came they were wrapped in a dense fog, and the captain, dreading the nearness of the coast, hove to.  When day dawned the fog lifted, and the ship was found to be off Long Branch, and a wrecked ship was seen on the shore; she had been driven there during the night.  The pilot soon came aboard and they sailed through the Narrows and into the harbor of New York, having spent fifty-two days on the ocean.  As they approached the city a little tug-boat was seen coming to meet them.  It bore George and John Hecker and Mr. McMaster, whose cordial greetings were the first welcome the young Redemptorists heard on their return to the New World.  They were soon at their home in the convent in Third Street, and on the sixth of April following the first mission was opened in St. Joseph’s Church, Washington Place, New York.

Here is Dr. Brownson’s greeting, from his home in Chelsea, Mass., received by Father Hecker soon after his arrival: 

“My very dear friend, you cannot imagine what pleasure it gives me to learn of your arrival in New York. . . .  I want to see you much, very much.  You have much to tell me that it is needful that I should know, and I beg you to come to see me.  Tell your superiors from me that your visit to me will be more than an act of charity to me personally, and that it is highly necessary—­not merely as a matter of pleasure to us two—­that we should meet; and tell them that I earnestly beg to have you come and spend a few days with me.  I am sure that they will permit you to do so in furtherance