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. But his sweet and candid expression, his
gentle and affectionate manner, were very winning. He had an air of
singular refinement and self-reliance combined with a half-eager
inquisitiveness, and upon becoming acquainted with him, I told him
that he was Ernest the Seeker, which was the title of a story of
mental unrest which William Henry Channing was then publishing in the
_Dial._

"Hecker, or, as I always called him and think of him, Isaac, had
apparently come to Brook Farm because it was a result of the
intellectual agitation of the time which had reached and touched him
in New York. He had been bred a baker, he told me, and I remember
with what satisfaction he said to me, 'I am sure of my livelihood
because I can make good bread.' His powers in this way were most
satisfactorily tested at the Farm, or, as it was generally called,
'the Community,' although it was in no other sense a community than
an association of friendly workers in common. He was drawn to Brook
Farm by the belief that its life would be at least agreeable to his
convictions and tastes, and offer him the society of those who might
answer some of his questions, even if they could not satisfy his
longings.

"By what influences his mind was first affected by the moral movement
known in New England as transcendentalism, I do not know. Probably he
may have heard Mr. Emerson lecture in New York, or he may have read
Brownson's _Charles Elwood,_ which dealt with the questions that
engaged his mind and conscience. But among the many interesting
figures at Brook Farm I recall none more sincerely absorbed than
Isaac Hecker in serious questions. The merely aesthetic aspects of its
life, its gayety and social pleasures, he regarded good-naturedly,
with the air of a spectator who tolerated rather than needed or
enjoyed them. There was nothing ascetic or severe in him, but I have
often thought since that his feeling was probably what he might have
afterward described as a consciousness that he must be about his
Father's business.

"I do not remember him as especially studious. Mr. Ripley had classes
in German philosophy and metaphysics, in Kant and Spinoza, and Isaac
used to look in, as he turned wherever he thought he might find
answers to