Men whose mental characteristics resembled his became, soon or late, his enthusiastic disciples, and as to others, although at first some were inclined to suspect him, many of them ended by becoming his warm friends.
It is in this light that we must view the precocious efforts of the young politician.

Nothing was further from his thoughts at any time than to employ politics as a means to any private end.

Although we have already quoted him as saying that he always felt bound to demand some good reason why he should not use all things lawfully his, and enjoy to the full every innocent pleasure, yet that demand was made solely in the interests of human freedom, never in that of self-indulgence.

He seems to have been ascetic by nature--a Stoic, not an Epicurean, by the very make-up of his personality.

The reader will see this more clearly as we pass on to the succeeding phases of Father Hecker's interior life.