Life of Father Hecker | Page 8

her on the subject and who could not be
reconciled to the conversion of a daughter: 'No, I would not change the
faith of my sons. They have found peace and joy in the Catholic
Church, and I would not by a word change their faith, if I could.'"
"She had a very earnest temperament, and what she did she did with all
her heart. The last years of her life she was a great invalid, but from her
sick room she did wonders. Family ties were kept warm, and no one
whom she had loved and known was forgotten. The poor were ever
welcome, and came to her in crowds, never leaving without help and
consolation. She had a very cheerful spirit, and a bright, pleasant, and
even witty word for every one.
"But the strongest trait in her character was her deeply religious nature.
With the Catholic faith it would have found expression in the religious
life, as she sometimes said herself. The faith she had made her most
earnest and devout, according to her light."
Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby, who spent a month at the house in
Rutgers Street just after Isaac finally returned from Brook Farm, when
Mrs. Hecker was in the prime of middle life, speaks of her as "a lovely
and dignified character, full of 'humanities.' She was fair, tall, erect, a
very superior example of the German house-mother. Hers was the
controlling spirit in the house, and her wise and generous influence was
felt far beyond it. She was a life-long Methodist, and took me with her
to a 'Love Feast,' which I had never witnessed before."
To the good sense, good temper, and strong religious nature of Caroline
Hecker her children owed, and always cordially acknowledged, a heavy,
and in one respect an almost undivided, debt of gratitude. Neither
Engel Freund nor John Hecker professed any religious faith. The latter
was never in the habit of attending any place of worship. Both were
Lutheran so far as their antecedents could make them so, but neither
seems to have practically known much beyond the flat negation, or at
best the simple disregard, of Christianity to which Protestantism leads
more or less quickly according as the logical faculty is more or less
developed in those whose minds have been fed upon it. However, there
was nothing aggressive in the attitude of either toward religious

observance. The grandfather especially seems to have been a "gentle
sceptic," an agnostic in the germ, affirming nothing beyond the natural,
probably because all substantial ground for supernatural affirmations
seemed to him to be cut away by the fundamental training imparted to
him. He was a kindly, virtuous, warm-hearted man, with a life of his
own which made him incurious and thoughtful, and singularly devoid
of prejudices. When his daughter Caroline elected to desert the
Reformed Dutch Church in which the family had a pew, and to attach
herself to another sect, he had only a jocular word of surprise to say
concerning her odd fancy for "those noisy Methodists." He had a true
German fondness for old ways and settled customs, and to the end of
his days spoke only his own vernacular.
"Why don't you talk English?" somebody once asked him toward the
close of his life.
"I don't know how," he answered. "I never had time to learn."
"Why, how long have you been here?"
"About forty years."
"Forty years! And isn't that time enough to learn English in?"
"What can one learn in forty years?" said the old man, with an
unanswerable twinkle.
Between him and the youngest of his Hecker grandchildren there
existed a singular sympathy and affection. The two were very much
together, and the little fellow was allowed to potter about the workshop
and encouraged to study the ins and outs of all that went on there, as
well as entertained with kindly talk that may at first have been a trifle
above his years. But he was a precocious child, shrewd, observant, and
thoughtful. It was in the old watchmaker's shop that the boy, not yet a
dozen years old, and already hard at work helping to earn his own
living, conceived the plan of making a clock with his own hands and
presenting it to the church attended by the family, which was situated
in Forsyth Street between Walker and Hester. The clock was finished in

due time and set up in the church, where it ticked faithfully until the
edifice was torn down, some forty years later. Then it was returned to
its maker in accordance with a promise made by the pastor when the
gift was accepted. In 1872 the opening number of the third volume of
The Young Catholic contained a good engraving of it, accompanied by
a sketch descriptive