who had an
intimate acquaintance with both of them for more than forty years.
She adds:

"Mrs. Hecker was a woman of great energy of character and strong
religious nature. Her son, Father Hecker, inherited both of these
traits, and there was the warmest sympathy between them. He was her
youngest son, her baby, she called him, but with all her tender love
she had a holy veneration for his character as priest.

"She deeply sympathized with him through the trials and anxieties
that were his in his search after truth, and when his heart found
rest, and the aspirations of his soul were answered in the Holy
Catholic Church, her noble heart accepted for him what she could not
see for herself. She said to a lady who spoke to her on the subject
and who could not be reconciled to the conversion of a daughter: 'No,
I would not change the faith of my sons. They have found peace and
joy in the Catholic Church, and I would not by a word change their
faith, if I could.'"

"She had a very earnest temperament, and what she did she did with
all her heart. The last years of her life she was a great invalid,
but from her sick room she did wonders. Family ties were kept warm,
and no one whom she had loved and known was forgotten. The poor were
ever welcome, and came to her in crowds, never leaving without help
and consolation. She had a very cheerful spirit, and a bright,
pleasant, and even witty word for every one.

"But the strongest trait in her character was her deeply religious
nature. With the Catholic faith it would have found expression in the
religious life, as she sometimes said herself. The faith she had made
her most earnest and devout, according to her light."

Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, who spent a month at the house in
Rutgers Street just after Isaac finally returned from Brook Farm,
when Mrs. Hecker was in the prime of middle life, speaks of her as "a
lovely and dignified character, full of 'humanities.' She was fair,
tall, erect, a very superior example of the German house-mother. Hers
was the controlling spirit in the house, and her wise and generous
influence was felt far beyond it. She was a life-long Methodist, and
took me with her to a 'Love Feast,' which I had never witnessed
before."

To the good sense, good temper, and strong religious nature of
Caroline Hecker her children owed, and always cordially acknowledged,
a heavy, and in one respect an almost undivided, debt of gratitude.
Neither Engel Freund nor