you wish me back. Let me tell you how it is
with me. The life which surrounds me in New York oppresses me,
contracts my feelings, and abridges my liberty. Business, as it is
now pursued, is a burden upon my spiritual life, and all its
influence hurtful to the growth of a better life. This I have felt
for a long time, and feel it now more intensely than before. And the
society I had there was not such as benefited me. My life was not
increased by theirs, and I was gradually ceasing to be. I was lonely,
friendless, and without object in this world, while at the same time
I was conscious of a greater degree of activity of mind in another
direction. These causes still remain. . . .

". . . I feel fully conscious of the importance of making any change
in my life at my present age--giving up those advantages which so
many desire; as well as the necessity of being considerate, prudent,
and slow to decide. I am aware that my future state here, and hence
hereafter, will greatly depend upon the steps I now take, and
therefore I would do nothing unadvised or hastily. I would not
sacrifice eternal for worldly life. At present I wish to live a true
life, desiring nothing external, seeing that things external cannot
procure those things for and in which I live. I do not renounce
things, but feel no inclination for them. All is indifferent to
me--poverty or riches, life or death. I am loosed. But do not on this
account think I am sorrowful; nay, for I have nothing to sorrow for.
Is there no bright hope at a distance which cheers me onward and
beckons me to speed? I dare not say. Sometimes I feel so--it is the
unutterable. Yet I remain contented to be without spring or autumn,
youth or age. One tie has been loosened after another; the dreams of
my youth have passed away silently, and the visions of the future I
then beheld have vanished. I feel awakened as from a dream, and like
a shadow has my past gone by. With the verse at the bottom of the
picture you gave me, I can say:

"'Oh! days that once I used to prize,
Are ye forever gone?
The veil is taken from my eyes,
And now I stand alone.'

"But I would not recall those by-gone days, nor do I stand alone. No!
Out from this life will spring a higher world, of which the past was
but a weak, faint shadow."

________________________

CHAPTER V

AT BROOK FARM

THE famous though short-lived community at West Roxbury,
Massachusetts, where Isaac Hecker made his first trial of