Speaking of this period, Father Hecker said: "Some time after my reception into the Church, I went to Bishop McCloskey and told him I had scruples against renting a seat in the Cathedral in Mott Street.

'If I do,' I said, 'I shall feel sore at the thought that I have set apart for me in the house of God a seat which a poor man cannot use.' I told him that for this reason I had knelt down near the doorway, among the crowd of transient poor people.

Oh, how he eased my spirit by sympathizing with my sentiment, and satisfied me by declaring that the renting of pews was only from necessity, and he wished we could get along without it." His relations with some of his former friends at Brook Farm still continued, though in a somewhat attenuated condition.

From a long and appreciative letter sent him by Burrill Curtis, we make an extract, followed by Isaac's comments on it: "October 13, 1844 .-- Your preparedness for any fate has been one of the chief attractions of your character to me, for I believe it is deeper than a mere state of mind.

But, for all that, your restlessness is uppermost just now; not as a contradictory element, for it is not; but as a discovering power." Isaac's journal, just at this time, was chiefly devoted to what he calls "the many smaller, venial sins which beset my path and keep me down to earth.