There was no one in it who "increased his life." But at Brook Farm he met some one, as is revealed by his diary and correspondence, who deeply attracted him, and who might have attracted him as far as marriage had he not already received the Holy Spirit's prevenient grace of virginity.

That is to say, he found "a being," to use his impersonal term, whose name and identity he is careful to veil, awkwardly enough at times with misleading pronouns, whose charm was so great as to win from him what would have been, in his normal state, a marital affection.

But he was no longer normal.
Although still beyond the visible pale of that garden of elect souls, God's holy Church, he was already transformed by the quickening grace which "reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly." Our next quotations afford explicit proof on this point: "Tuesday, May 16 .-- Life appears to be a perpetual struggle between the heavenly and the worldly.
"Here at Brook Farm I become acquainted with persons who have moved in a higher rank in society than I--persons of good education and fine talents; all of which has an improving influence on me.

And I meet with those to whom I can speak, and feel that, to a great degree, I am understood and responded to.

In New York I am alone in the midst of people.