More than anything else, indeed, Brook Farm taught him the defect of human nature on its highest plane; but it taught him also the worthiness of the men and women of America of the apostle's toil and blood.

The gentle natures whom he there knew and learned to love, their spirit of self-sacrifice for the common good, their minds at once innocent and cultivated, their devotion to their high ideal, the absence of meanness, coarseness, vulgarity, the sinking of private ambitions, the patience with the defects of others, their desire to establish the communism of at least intellectual gifts--all this and much more of the kind fixed his views and affections in a mould which eminently fitted him as a vessel of election for apostolic uses.
Before passing to the study of Isaac Hecker's own interior during the period of his residence at Brook Farm, it is our pleasant privilege to communicate to our readers the subjoined charming reminiscence of his personality at the time, from one who was his associate there: "West New Brighton, S.I., February 28, 1890 .-- DEAR SIR: I fear that my recollections of Father Hecker will be of little service to you, for they are very scant.

But the impression of the young man whom I knew at Brook Farm is still vivid.

It must have been in the year 1843 that he came to the Farm in West Roxbury, near Boston.

He was a youth of twenty-three, of German aspect, and I think his face was somewhat seamed with small-pox.