han in condemning them, and that I valued praise as a higher form of
influence than any kind of threatening or compulsion." Nor did he
resort to the formalities of obedience to secure his end. "Why don't
you put me under obedience to do this?" asked a father who did not
exactly approve of a proposal Father Hecker had made to him. The
answer was given with a good deal of heat: "I have never done such a
thing in my life, and I am not going to begin now!" Nor had he any
use for bitter speech even in cold blood. "One thing," he said in a
letter, "I will now correct; a sneer--intentionally or consciously--
is a thing that, so far as my memory serves, I am as innocent of as a
little babe." Yet he could be sarcastic, as the following memorandum
shows: "Cardinal Cullen once said to me, after I had made a journey
through Ireland, 'Well, Father Hecker, what do you think of Ireland?'
I answered: 'Your Eminence, my thoughts about Ireland are such that I
will get out of the country as soon as I can; for if I expressed my
sentiments I should soon be put into jail for Fenianism!'" This was in
1867 while Fenianism was rampant. Of course he did not approve of it,
but the sights he saw taught him its awful provocation. And once when
unduly pressed with the dictum of an author whose range of power was
not high enough to overcome Father Hecker's objections, he said: "I
am not content to live to be the echo of dead men's thoughts." But it
was not by skill in the thrust and parry of argumentative fence that
Father Hecker won his way in a discussion, but by the hard drive of a
great principle. The following memorandum describes the effect of
this on an ordinary man:

"It is rather amusing when Father Hecker asks me some of his stunning
questions on the deepest topics of the divine sciences. I look blank
at him, I ask him to explain, I fish up some stale commonplace from
the memory of my studies--and he then gives me his own original, his
luminous answer."

And both his choice of subjects in conversation and his natural
manner were according to his temperament, which was meditative. This
gave his countenance when at rest a peaceful cast until within a few
years of the end, when "death's pale flag" cast upon it a shade of
foreboding. We have a photograph of him taken when he was about
forty-five and in average good health, showing a tranquil face, full
of thought and with eyes cast down; to the writer's mind it is the
typical Isaac Hecker. Bu