plain that there could not have been much room for formal study
in a life of hard physical labor, so soon begun and so unremittingly
continued during the years usually given up to school work. An
ordinary boy, placed in such circumstances, would doubtless have
grown up ignorant and unformed. But while none of the Hecker boys was
quite of the ordinary stamp, Isaac was distinctly _sui generis_ and
individual. He has said of himself that he could remember no period
of his life when he had not the consciousness of having been sent
into the world for some especial purpose. What it was he knew not,
but expectation and desire for the withheld knowledge kept him
pondering and self-withdrawn. Once in his childhood he was given over
for death with a bad attack of confluent small-pox, and his mother
came to his bedside to tell him so. "No, mother," he answered her, "I
shall not die now. God has a work for me to do in the world, and I
shall live to do it."

Such instruction as Isaac obtained before beginning to earn his own
bread was given him in Ward School No. 7. A Dr. Kirby was then its
principal, and the time was just previous to the introduction of the
present system. The schools were not entirely free, a small payment
being required from the parents for each pupil, to supplement the
grant of public funds. No doubt the boy, who had an ardent thirst for
knowledge, regretted his removal from his desk more deeply than he
was at the time willing to express. Still, it may be questioned
whether he ever had any natural aptitude for close, continuous
book-work, at least on ordinary and prescribed lines. He was "always
studying," indeed, as he sometimes said in speaking of his early
life, but the thoughts of other men, whether written or spoken, do
not seem to have been greatly valued by him, except as keys which
might help him to unlock those mysteries of God and man, and their
mutual relations, which tormented him from the first. He was to the
last an indefatigable reader, but yet it would be true to say that he
was never either a student or a scholar in the ordinary sense. It is
a curious question as to how a thorough education might have modified
Father Hecker. It is possible--nay, as the reader may be inclined to
believe with us as the story of his inner life goes on, it is even
probable--that the more he was taught by God the less he was able to
receive from men.

It is certain, however, that he seriously regretted and soon se