On this point the memoranda, so often to be referred to, contain some words of his own to the same purport.  They were spoken early in 1882:  “You know I had to leave my business—­a good business it was getting to be, too.  I tell you, it was agony to give everything up—­friends, prospects in life and old associates; things for which by nature I had a very strong attachment.  But I could not help it; I was driven from it.  I wanted something more; something I had not been able to find.  Yet I did not know what I wanted.  I was simply in torment.”

The truth is that, while he had always cherished ideals higher than are usual, still they were not such as need set him apart from the common life of men.  But now he became suddenly averse from certain pursuits and pleasures, not only good in themselves, but consonant to his previous dispositions.  The road to wealth lay open before him, but his feet refused to tread it.  He was invincibly drawn to poverty, solitude, sacrifice; modes of life from which he shrank by nature, and which led to no goal that he could see or understand.  There is no name so descriptive of such impulses as supernatural.

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CHAPTER IV

LED BY THE SPIRIT

THE earliest of the letters so fortunately preserved by the affection of Isaac Hecker’s kindred is addressed to his mother, from Chelsea, and bears date December 24, 1842.  After giving some details of his arrival, and of the kindly manner in which he had been received, he writes:*

[* We have corrected some slight errors of orthography and punctuation in these early letters.  They were of the sort to be expected from a self-trained youth, as yet little used to the written expression of his thoughts.  They soon disappear almost entirely.]

“But as regards your advice to write my thoughts to you, that is an impossibility which I cannot govern or control.  This ought not to be so, but so it is.  Am I to blame?  I feel not.  And what if I could tell?  It might be only a deep dissatisfaction which could not be made intelligible, or at least not be felt as it is felt by me.  Let us be untroubled about it.  A little time, and, I hope, all will pass away, and I be the same as usual.  We all differ a little, at least in our characters; hence there is nothing surprising if our experiences should differ.  I feel that a little time will be my best remedy, which I trust we will await without much anxiety.  Resignation is taught when we cannot help ourselves.  Take nothing I have said discouragingly.  Turn fears into hopes and doubts into faith, and we shall be better if not happier.  There is no use in allowing our doubts and fears to control us; by fostering them we increase them, and we want all our time for something better and higher.”

Two days later he writes more fully, and this letter we shall give almost entire: