“But if there is a great difference of spirit, can we live together?  Does not like seek like?  In money matters things must certainly be other than they have been.  We must agree that no accounts shall be kept between ourselves, let the consequences be what they may.  I would rather suffer evils from a dependence on the spirit of love than permit that of selfishness to exist between us.  I ask not a cent above what will supply my immediate, necessary wants. . .  They may demand ten times more than I, and it would be a happiness to me to see them use it, even if I thought they used it wrongfully.  All the check I would be willing to employ would be that of love and mutual good feeling.  If I remain as I now am, I shall require very little, and that little would be spent for the benefit and help of others.

“July 23.—­I will go home, be true to the spirit with the help of God, and wait for further light and strength. . . .  I feel that I cannot live at this place as I would.  This is not the place for my soul. . .  My life is not theirs.  They have been the means of giving me much light on myself, but I feel I would live and progress more in a different atmosphere.”

On the 25th of July Isaac finally departed from Fruitlands, and after remaining for a few days at Brook Farm, he returned to his home in New York.  Before following him thither, it may be well to give at once such further references to this period of his life as are contained in the memoranda.  The following extract is undated: 

"A propos of Emerson’s death, Father Hecker said:  ’I knew him well.  When I resolved to become a Catholic I was boarding at the house of Henry Thoreau’s mother, a stone’s-throw from Emerson’s at Concord.’”

“What did Thoreau say about it?”

“’What’s the use of your joining the Catholic Church?  Can’t you get along without hanging to her skirts?’ I suppose Emerson found it out from Thoreau, so he tried his best to get me out of the notion.  He invited me to tea with him, and he kept leading up to the subject and I leading away from it.  The next day he asked me to drive over with him to the Shakers, some fifteen miles.  We stayed over night, and all the way there and back he was fishing for my reasons, with the plain purpose of dissuading me.  Then Alcott and he arranged matters so that they cornered me in a sort of interview, and Alcott frankly developed the subject.  I finally said, ’Mr. Alcott, I deny your inquisitorial right in this matter,’ and so they let it drop.  One day, however, I was walking along the road and Emerson joined me.  Presently he said, ’Mr. Hecker, I suppose it was the art, the architecture, and so on in the Catholic Church which led you to her?’ ‘No,’ said I; ’but it was what caused all that.’  I was the first to break the Transcendental camp.  Brownson came some time after me.

“Years later, during the war, I went to Concord to lecture, and wanted Emerson to help me get a hall.  He refused.