courageous I felt. _Answer:_ That is the way I used
to feel. I used to say, O Lord! I feel as if I had the whole world on
my shoulders; and all I've got to say is, O Lord! I am sorry you've
given me such small potatoes to carry on my back. But now--well, when
a mosquito comes in I say, Mosquito, have you any good to do me? Yes?
Then I thank you, for I am glad to get good from a mosquito."

It will thus be seen that whatever diseases may have enfeebled Father
Hecker's body, his spirit suffered from a malady known only to great
souls--thirst for God. This gave him rest neither day nor night, or
allowed him intervals of peace only to return with renewed force.
Some men love gold too much for their peace of mind, some love women
too much, and some power; men like Father Hecker love the Infinite
Good too much to be happy in soul or sound in body unless He be
revealed to them as a loving father. And this knowledge of God once
possessed and lost again, although it breeds a purer, a more
perfectly disinterested love, leaves both soul and body in a state of
acute distress. "My soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh longeth for
Thee, in a dry and desert land without water."

Tried by these visitations, he was free to acknowledge that in past
times he had been favored above others:

"Oh! there was a time," he said, "when I was borne along high above
nature by the grace of God, and I feared that I should die without
being subject to nature, and should never feel the need of the
supernatural. But for many years now I have been left by God to my
natural weakness and get nothing whatever except what I earn."

The following words of his indicate the cleansing process of these
divine influences; it is from memoranda:

"He said to me once, after he had been for nine or ten years subject
to almost unceasing desolation of spirit, 'all this suffering, though
it has been excruciating, has greatly purified me and was of the last
necessity to me. Oh, how proud I was! how vain I was! And these long
years of abandonment by God have healed me.' I think this was the
only time I ever knew him to connect his sufferings with fault. What
he said may have referred to the mere temper and frame of his mind
rather than to particular, specific faults. He undoubtedly thought
more highly of human nature before that desolation began than he did
at the end of it."

Meantime he used every aid for the assuagement of his interior
sufferings, just as he conscie