At first the new circumstances were a little strange and embarrassing to him.
After a fortnight, or thereabouts, we find him noting that he is "not one of their spirits.

They say 'Mr.Hecker' in a tone they do not use in speaking to each other." But the strangeness soon wore off and he yielded to the influence of the place with a wholeness which would have been entire but for the stronger drawing which never let him free.
On this point, too, the witness of the journal is peremptory.

So it is as to the unity and consistence of his interior experiences from first to last.

Child, and boy, and man, there was always the same ardent sincerity of purpose in him, the same docility to the Voice that spoke within, the same attitude toward "the life that now is" which Mr.Curtis, in the letter given in the preceding chapter, has described, with so fine an insight, as one of reserve and observation.

"He was the dove floating in the air, not yet finding the spot on which his foot might rest," writes Mr.Curtis of Isaac Hecker at that period of his youth when his surroundings and companions were for the first time, and very possibly for the last, wholly congenial to his natural inclinations.