d he certainly never
was dishonest.

"The influence of his mother was of the most powerful kind. He told
me that the severest punishment she ever inflicted on him was once or
twice (once only, I am pretty sure) to tell him that she was angry
with him; and this so distressed him that he was utterly miserable,
sat down on the floor completely overcome, and so remained till she
after a time relented and restored him to favor. Such a relationship
is quite instructive in reference to the original innocence of his
life."

________________________

CHAPTER II

YOUTH

It has been said already, in speaking of Father Hecker's childhood,
that he had been consciously under the influence of supernatural
impressions from a very early period. It seems probable, therefore,
that at least during the few years which preceded his juvenile plunge
into politics he must have been devout and prayerful, though
doubtless in his own spontaneous way. Such were his mother's
characteristics, and we find her son writing to her, when his
aspirations after the perfect life had led him to the threshold of
the church, that she, of all persons, ought most to sympathize with
him, for he is about doing that which will aid him to be what she has
always desired to see him. But his devotions probably bore small
resemblance to those of the ordinary religiously minded boy, either
Catholic or Protestant. He has said that often at night, when lying
on the shavings before the oven in the bake-house, he would start up,
roused in spite of himself by some great thought, and run out upon
the wharves to look at the East River in the moonlight, or wander
about under the spell of some resistless aspiration. What does God
desire from me? How shall I attain unto Him? What is it He has sent
me into the world to do? These were the ceaseless questions of a
heart that rested, meanwhile, in an unshaken confidence that time
would bring the answer.

But these were early days, days when the influence of his mother,
never wholly shaken off, was still dominant and pervasive in all that
concerned him. There came a period, however, beginning in all
likelihood about his fourteenth, and lasting until his twentieth year
or thereabouts, in which he certainly lost hold on all distinctively
Christian doctrines. With such a mind as his, and such a training,
this was almost inevitable. His intellect, while it hungered
incessantly after supernatural truth, kept nevertheless a pe