upon me, I give it up once and for all. It gives me pain to feel
my perfect want of faith in myself as being in any way useful."

Meantime, on Trinity Sunday, he had been confirmed with his brother
George, whose entrance into the Church is here first indicated; no
other member of the family became a Catholic. Isaac took the
additional name of Thomas on receiving this sacrament, in honor of
St. Thomas Aquinas.

Again he writes:

"I have tried to study to-day, but I cannot. Is it not the business
of man to save his own soul, and this before all things? Does the
study of Greek and Latin help a soul towards its salvation? Is it not
quite a different thing from grace? Sometimes I feel strongly
inclined to set aside all study, all reading, as superficial and not
so important as contemplation and silence."

The time was coming when the Holy Spirit would do this in spite of
him and in a way the reverse of pleasant. Meantime he worked away at
his books and attended his classes at Cornelius Institute, which was
the name of the private school he had been attending, till July 16,
the commencement day. In recording his impressions of the school and
the acquaintances there made, he says that with one possible
exception the young men were of little interest to him, lacking
earnestness of character. He does not name the teachers or give the
location of the school. Yet he says his experience there had been
useful "and chastened my hopes. I have seen by means of it much more
clearly into the workings of Protestantism, its want of deep
spirituality, its superficiality, and its inevitable tendency to
no-religion."

As may be supposed, his visits to Third Street became frequent, and
his acquaintance with the Fathers better established. This was
especially true with regard to Father Rumpler, who was rector of the
house, a learned and able man and one of mature spirituality. He was
a German born and bred, with the hard ideas of discipline peculiar to
a class of his countrymen though foreign to the genuine German
character. He impressed young Hecker as a sedate man, wise and firm.
The friendship then begun was maintained until Father Rumpler was
deprived of his reason by an attack of acute mania several years
later. But more than the friendship of Rumpler, as far as immediate
results were concerned, was the providential circumstance of two
other young Americans having applied to join the Redemptorists. To
Isaac this was a stimulant of