STRUGGLES THE citations thus far made from Isaac Hecker's youthful diary, although penned at Brook Farm, bear few traces of that fact.

They might have been written in a desert for all evidence they give of any special influence produced upon him by personal contact with others.
It is not until the middle of May, 1843, that he begins to make any reference to his actual surroundings.
Before following him into these more intimate self-confidences, and especially before giving in his own words an account of that peculiar occurrence which so permanently affected his future, some preliminary remarks seem necessary.
It has been said already, in an earlier chapter of this biography, that but for some special intervention of Divine Providence, it is more than probable that Isaac Hecker would have led the ordinary life of men in the world, continuing, indeed, to cherish a high ideal of the duties of the citizen of a free country, but pursuing it along well-beaten ways.

There is no doubt that, unless some such event as he has narrated, or some influence equivalent to it in effect, had supernaturally drawn him away, he would of his own volition have sought what he was repeatedly advised to seek by his most attached friends, a congenial union in wedlock.

He was naturally susceptible, and his attachments were not only firm, but often seemed obstinate.
Of celibacy he had, up to this time, no other idea than such as the common run of non-Catholics possess.

At home, indeed, when afterwards pressed to seek a wife, he had answered, truly enough, though holding fast to his secret, that he "had no thought of marrying and felt an aversion to company for such an end." And again he writes to his mother, anxious and troubled for his future, that the circle which surrounded him in New York oppressed and contracted him, and abridged his liberty.