g to employ would be that of love and mutual
good feeling. If I remain as I now am, I shall require very little,
and that little would be spent for the benefit and help of others.

"July 23.--I will go home, be true to the spirit with the help of
God, and wait for further light and strength. . . . I feel that I
cannot live at this place as I would. This is not the place for my
soul. . . My life is not theirs. They have been the means of giving
me much light on myself, but I feel I would live and progress more in
a different atmosphere."

On the 25th of July Isaac finally departed from Fruitlands, and after
remaining for a few days at Brook Farm, he returned to his home in
New York. Before following him thither, it may be well to give at
once such further references to this period of his life as are
contained in the memoranda. The following extract is undated:

_"A propos_ of Emerson's death, Father Hecker said: 'I knew him well.
When I resolved to become a Catholic I was boarding at the house of
Henry Thoreau's mother, a stone's-throw from Emerson's at Concord.'"

"What did Thoreau say about it?"

"'What's the use of your joining the Catholic Church? Can't you get
along without hanging to her skirts?' I suppose Emerson found it out
from Thoreau, so he tried his best to get me out of the notion. He
invited me to tea with him, and he kept leading up to the subject and
I leading away from it. The next day he asked me to drive over with
him to the Shakers, some fifteen miles. We stayed over night, and all
the way there and back he was fishing for my reasons, with the plain
purpose of dissuading me. Then Alcott and he arranged matters so that
they cornered me in a sort of interview, and Alcott frankly developed
the subject. I finally said, 'Mr. Alcott, I deny your inquisitorial
right in this matter,' and so they let it drop. One day, however, I
was walking along the road and Emerson joined me. Presently he said,
'Mr. Hecker, I suppose it was the art, the architecture, and so on in
the Catholic Church which led you to her?' 'No,' said I; 'but it was
what caused all that.' I was the first to break the Transcendental
camp. Brownson came some time after me.

"Years later, during the war, I went to Concord to lecture, and
wanted Emerson to help me get a hall. He refused.

"Alcott promised that he would, but he did not, and I think Emerson
dissuaded him. After a time, however, a priest, a church, and a
congregation of some