"I found out that he is one of five little brothers, and their mother is a widow.

She is trying to bring them up, poor thing! It reminds me of my own mother." It is plain that there could not have been much room for formal study in a life of hard physical labor, so soon begun and so unremittingly continued during the years usually given up to school work.

An ordinary boy, placed in such circumstances, would doubtless have grown up ignorant and unformed.

But while none of the Hecker boys was quite of the ordinary stamp, Isaac was distinctly _sui generis_ and individual.

He has said of himself that he could remember no period of his life when he had not the consciousness of having been sent into the world for some especial purpose.