“Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him in New York.  He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember with what satisfaction he said to me, ’I am sure of my livelihood because I can make good bread.’  His powers in this way were most satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called, ‘the Community,’ although it was in no other sense a community than an association of friendly workers in common.  He was drawn to Brook Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his longings.

“By what influences his mind was first affected by the moral movement known in New England as transcendentalism, I do not know.  Probably he may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read Brownson’s Charles Elwood, which dealt with the questions that engaged his mind and conscience.  But among the many interesting figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than Isaac Hecker in serious questions.  The merely aesthetic aspects of its life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly, with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or enjoyed them.  There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his Father’s business.

“I do not remember him as especially studious.  Mr. Ripley had classes in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find answers to his questions.  He went to hear Theodore Parker preach in the Unitarian Church in the neighboring village of West Roxbury.  He went into Boston, about ten miles distant, to talk with Brownson, and to Concord to see Emerson.  He entered into the working life at the Farm, but always, as it seemed to me, with the same reserve and attitude of observation.  He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest.

“The impression that I gathered from my intercourse with him, which was boyishly intimate and affectionate, was that of all ’the apostles of the newness,’ as they were gayly called, whose counsel he sought, Brownson was the most satisfactory to him.  I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson’s masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his ‘understanding,’ as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason.  Brownson’s mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical.  Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing toward the Catholic Church, and his virile force fascinated the more delicate and sensitive temper of the young man, and, I have always supposed, was the chief influence which at that time affected Hecker’s views, although he did not then enter the Catholic Church.