IT was the middle of August, 1843, when Isaac Hecker once more took up his residence with his family in New York. His first endeavor was to sink back again as far as possible into the old routine of business.
"To-morrow I commence to work," he writes on the evening of his return. "My interior state is quiet and peaceful. I have not met any one yet. My dear mother understands me better than any one else. How far business will interfere with my inner life remains to be seen. O Lord! help me to keep my resolution, which is not to let the world enter my heart, but to keep it looking toward Thee! My heart has been in a constant prayerful state since I have been at home. It is busy in its own sanctuary, its own temple, God. O Lord! preserve it."
One of the first noteworthy things revealed by the diary--which from this time on was kept with less regularity than before--is that Isaac not only maintained his abstemious habits after his return, but increased their rigor. For a robust man, working hard for many hours out of every twenty-four, and deprived of all the pleasant relaxations, literary, conversational and musical, to which he had been accustoming himself for many months, the choice of such a diet as is described in the following sentences was certainly extraordinary:
"August 30.--If the past nine months or more are any evidence, I find that I can live on very simple diet--grains, fruit, and nuts. I have just commenced to eat the latter; I drink pure water. So far I have had wheat ground and made into unleavened bread, but as soon as we get in a new lot, I shall try it in the grain."
He had evidently at this time a practical conviction of the truth of a principle which, in after years, he repeated to the present writer in the form of a maxim of the transcendentalists: "A gross feeder will never be a central thinker." It is a truth of the spiritual no less than of the intellectual order. A little later we come upon the following profession of a vegetarian faith, which will be apt to amuse as well as to edify the reader:
"It is taking animal life when the other kingdoms offer sufficient and better increment.
"Slaughter strengthens the lower instincts.
"It is the chief cause of the slavery of the kitchen.