Dr. Ripley gained my confidence by claiming old acquaintance, recalling a former meeting that I had quite forgotten. Several years previous, when I was a very small boy indeed, my father had taken me with him on a flying trip from New York to Boston, deciding to do so, I suppose rather than to leave mother in a strange city with two children on her hands. During that brief visit Dr. Ripley had taken father to call on an illustrious artist, and he now recalled the circumstances to my mind. With his prompting I could remember riding in a carriage; seeing a tall silvery old gentleman wearing a black velvet robe lined with red, and tasting white grapes for the first time; but I could not think of the silvery gentleman’s name.
“Well,” said my mentor, “perhaps you will be glad sometime to know that the gentleman you saw was Washington Alston.”
Leaving Althea with Mrs. Ripley, we presently went over to the cottage, a small house near the Eyrie, occupied by Miss Russell and her two nieces; Mr. Dana, Mr. Hosmer and Mr. Hecker, finding the latter in Mr. Hosmer’s room.
Isaac Thomas Hecker was a religious enthusiast who came to Brook Farm for the same reason that Emerson left the Unitarian Church, namely, for his soul’s peace. He belonged to a well-to-do family in New York, engaged in the manufacture of flour specialties, but the restraints and the questionable practices of business were irksome to him, and he eagerly sought a home among the congenial spirits who were trying to live a higher life on their sterile little property in West Roxbury. Being one of the thoroughgoing kind, he had learned all the uses of flour from beginning to end, and this knowledge he gladly made available as baker-general for the Brook Farm community. He was a faithful and competent baker for several months; usually happy and cheerfully interested in all that was going on, but occasionally taking a day off for fasting and prayer. Early in the spring, Annie Page and I were hunting arbutus, or Mayflower as we called it, on the far side of the pine woods, when we came upon Mr. Hecker walking rapidly up and down in the secluded little dell that served him as a retreat. He was wringing his hands and sobbing so violently that we two scared children stole away, awed and mystified. Intruders on a scene that should not have been witnessed, we said nothing about it at the time, and I have never mentioned it until now.