f all of his letters home from both St. Trond and Wittem. We
have ten written from the novitiate. An exception must be made as to
one which describes in detail the daily order of life in the
novitiate. It is addressed to his mother.

He tells her that the first bell rings at half-past four in the
morning and the last at half-past nine at night. The time is divided
between various common and private devotional exercises, including
Mass, meditations, recitation of the office in common, study of the
rule of the order, spiritual conferences, spiritual reading, and the
like. Silence is broken only for an hour after dinner and another
hour after supper. About an hour of out-door exercise is taken every
day, and a long walk once a week and on feast-days. All of Thursday
in each week and the more important feasts of the year are days of
recreation, when silence need not be observed during the greater part
of the day, and much relaxation is otherwise allowed. All Fridays are
days of total silence and special devotion. The letter fails to
mention the discipline, or flagellation, which was taken twice a week.

He ends thus: "The time of the novitiate is one year, and its object
is to prove our vocation, and form the religious character--the
heart. The exercises may seem too many to you, but to us they are
quite otherwise. Their frequent changes prevent them from being
monotonous, and their variety makes them agreeable. Our time passes
without our taking count of it, and our joy is that of a pure
conscience, and our happiness that of a clean heart."

It might seem a matter of peculiar difficulty for a free nature like
Isaac Hecker's to conform to the stiff rules of such a system. But
this was not the case, and a closer look into the matter shows that
such a regimen is of much use to an earnest man, however free his
character, at the outset of his spiritual career. Experience proves
that one test of the genuineness of the interior disposition to serve
God perfectly is readiness to surrender exterior peculiarities. There
is nothing in the special graces of God which should hinder a placid
acceptance of the routine of a novitiate. The merging of individual
conduct into the common custom is the contribution which community
life must exact from every member. If a man is to be a hermit he may
act from individual impulses alone, though, even so, rarely without
counsel. But if one would live and work with others, special graces
and indi