Mr. Alcott’s death in 1888 was the occasion of the reminiscences which follow: 

“March 5, 1888.—­Bronson Alcott dead!  I saw him coming from Rochester on the cars.  I had been a Catholic missionary for I don’t know how many years.  We sat together.  ‘Father Hecker,’ said he, ’why can’t you make a Catholic of me?’ ‘Too much rust here,’ said I, clapping him on the knee.  He got very angry because I said that was the obstacle.  I never saw him angry at any other time.  He was too proud.

“But he was a great natural man.  He was faithful to pure, natural conscience.  His virtues came from that.  He never had any virtue beyond what a good pagan has.  He never aimed at anything more, nor claimed to.  He maintained that to be all.

“I don’t believe he ever prayed.  Whom could he pray to?  Was not Bronson Alcott the greatest of all?”

“Did he believe in God?”

“Not the God that we know.  He believed in the Bronson Alcott God.  He was his own God.”

“You say he was Emerson’s master:  what do you mean by that?”

“He taught Emerson.  He began life as a pedler.  The Yankee pedler was Emerson’s master.  Whatever principles Emerson had, Alcott gave him.  And Emerson was a good pupil; he was faithful to his master to the end.

“When did I know him first?  Hard to remember.  He was the head of Fruitlands, as Ripley was of Brook Farm.  They were entirely different men.  Diogenes and his tub would have been Alcott’s ideal if he had carried it out.  But he never carried it out.  Ripley’s ideal would have been Epictetus.  Ripley would have taken with him the good things of this life; Alcott would have rejected them all.”

“How did he receive you at Fruitlands?”

“Very kindly, but from mixed and selfish motives.  I suspected he wanted me because he thought I would bring money to the community.  Lane was entirely unselfish.

“Alcott was a man of no great intellectual gifts or acquirements.  His knowledge came chiefly from experience and instinct.  He had an insinuating and persuasive way with him—­he must have been an ideal pedler.”

“What if he had been a Catholic, and thoroughly sanctified?”

“He could have been nothing but a hermit like those of the fourth century—­he was naturally and constitutionally so odd.  Emerson, Alcott, and Thoreau were three consecrated cranks:  rather be crank than president.  All the cranks look up to them.”

Beside these later reminiscences we shall now place the contemporary record of his impressions made by Isaac Hecker while at Fruitlands.  Our first extract, however, was written at Brook Farm, a few days before going thither: 

“July 7, 1843.—­I go to Mr. Alcott’s next Tuesday, if nothing happens.  I have had three pairs of coarse pants and a coat made for me.  It is my intention to commence work as soon as I get there.  I will gradually simplify my dress without making any sudden difference, although it would be easier to make a radical and thorough change at once than piece by piece.  But this will be a lesson in patient perseverance to me.  All our difficulties should be looked at in such a light as to improve and elevate our minds.