The children were brought up, too, with exceedingly strict ideas about lying and stealing, and all petty vices.

Throughout the family there prevailed an extreme severity on such faults.

"I have never forgotten," said Father Hecker, "the furious anger of an aunt of mine and the violent beating she gave one of my cousins for stealing a cent from her drawer.

That training has had a great and lasting effect upon my character." In such antecedents and surroundings it is easy to see the source of that abiding confidence in human nature, and that love for the natural virtues which marked Father Hecker's whole career.

They had kept his own youth pure.