His childhood seems to have been a serious one.  In recurring to it in later life, as he often did, he never spoke of any games or sports in which he had shared, nor, in fact, of any amusements before the time when he began to attend lectures and the theatre.  It was the childhood of what we call in America a self-made man—­one in which the plastic human material is rudely dealt with by circumstances.  His mother taught him his prayers, the schoolmistress his letters, necessity his daily round of duties, and for the rest he was left very much to himself and to that interior Master of whose stress and constraint upon him he grew more intimately conscious as he grew in years.  The force of this inward pressure showed itself in many ways.  Outwardly it made his manner undemonstrative, and fixed an intangible yet very real barrier between him and his kindred, even when the affection that existed was extremely close and tender.  From infancy he exhibited that repugnance to touching or being touched by any one which marked him to the end.  Even his mother refrained from embracing him, knowing this singular aversion.  She would stroke his face, instead, when she was pleased with him, and say, “That is my kiss for you, my son.”

The mutual respect for each other’s personalities shown in this closest of human relations was characteristic of the entire family, as will be seen later, when the nature of the business connections between Isaac and his brothers has to be considered.  Far from weakening the natural ties, or impairing their proper influence, it seems to have strengthened and perfected them.  Asked once towards the close of his life how it was that he had never used tobacco in any form, he answered:  “Mother forbade it, and that was enough for George and me.  I was never ruled in any way but by her affection.  That was sufficient.”  The parallel fact that he never in his life drank a drop of liquor at a bar or at any public place was probably due to a similar injunction.  The children were brought up, too, with exceedingly strict ideas about lying and stealing, and all petty vices.  Throughout the family there prevailed an extreme severity on such faults.  “I have never forgotten,” said Father Hecker, “the furious anger of an aunt of mine and the violent beating she gave one of my cousins for stealing a cent from her drawer.  That training has had a great and lasting effect upon my character.”

In such antecedents and surroundings it is easy to see the source of that abiding confidence in human nature, and that love for the natural virtues which marked Father Hecker’s whole career.  They had kept his own youth pure.  He had been baptized in infancy, however, as the children of orthodox Protestants more commonly were at that period than at present, and in all probability validly, so that one could never positively say that nature in him had ever been unaided by grace in any particular instance.  It is the conviction of those who knew him best that he had never been guilty of deliberate mortal sin.  One of these writes: