day, I have seen many of them--enough of them. My present experience
in one way and another seems to have prepared me to lay a foundation
for action which will be suitable not only for the present but for
centuries to come. No one of my previous convictions have been
disturbed, but much strengthened and enlarged and settled. I see
nothing, practically, in which I am engaged, that, were it in my
power, I would now wish to alter or abandon. I shall return with the
resolution to continue them with more confidence, more zeal, more
energy."

He arrived in New York in June, 1870.

________________________

CHAPTER XXXII

THE LONG ILLNESS

WE have now arrived at the last period of Father Hecker's life, the
long illness which completed his meed of suffering and of merit, and
gradually drew him down to the grave. It will not be expected that we
shall treat extensively of this subject; nor can one who writes in
the beginning of the '90s about the closing scenes of a life which
ended late in the '80s go very much into detail without bringing in
the living. As to Father Hecker's latter days in this world, it may
be said that his joy and courage and buoyancy of spirits, as well as
his hopeful outlook upon men and things, were all tried in the
furnace of extreme bodily suffering as well as of the most
excruciating mental agony.

Four distinct epochs divide Father Hecker's life: one when in early
days he was driven from home and business and ultimately into the
Church by aspirations towards a higher life; another marks the
extraordinary dealings of God with his soul during his novitiate and
time of studies; the third was the struggle in Rome which produced
the Paulist community; the fourth and last was the illness which we
are now to consider. The closing scenes of his life are scattered
over more than sixteen years, filled with almost every form of pain
of body and darkness of soul.

From severe colds, acute headaches, and weakness of the digestive
organs Father Hecker was a frequent sufferer. But towards the end of
the year 1871 his headaches became much more painful, his appetite
left him, and sleeplessness and excitability of the nervous system
were added to his other ailments. Remedies of every kind were tried,
but without permanent relief, and, although he lectured and preached
and did his other work all winter and most of the following spring,
his weakness increased, until by the summer of 1872 he was wholly
in