Alexander Theroux
Isaac Hecker, a baker at Brook Farm and vision-haunted,
after becoming a resident of Concord, needed to find digs
and so took a room in Mrs. C. Thoreau's boarding house
where he continued to undertake a long spiritual journey
and as days passed pursued a friendship, let's call it that,
with the "stiffish" Henry who habitually walked by him
in the parlor, not out of rudeness, but being preoccupied
elsewhere, as often he was, out on the water, in forests.
"It's only by forgetting yourself you draw near to God,"
Henry told Ike, wandering back home late one night
and finding him sitting (crusading?) on the front porch,
idling in a swing chair. "It is not"—why dodge further?—
"when I am going to meet him," he said, regarding God,
"but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone
that I discover what God is. I say God," added Henry,
I am not sure that that is the name." Isaac just sat there
as Henry called back, "You will know what I mean,"
and he did just that, turning away to leave both alone,
God to his own good purposes and Isaac to his faith
who joined the Catholic Church, even going so far
as to found the Paulist Society and whenever asked
about his friend always said, "A 'consecrated crank.'"