The conversion of Mr. Baker made a great sensation in Baltimore, and wherever he was known. It was announced in the secular papers, and for some weeks a lively controversy arising out of it was kept up. It was the general topic of conversation in all circles, Catholic and Protestant. The sorrow of his own parishioners, of those who had loved and honored him so much while he was connected with St. Paul's parish, and especially of his more near and intimate friends, was very great. His own near relatives, and a certain number of his intimate friends, never were in the least alienated from him, but remained as closely bound to him in affection as ever, while they and he lived. The great majority of those who had been his admirers, and who had listened with delight to his eloquent preaching, always retained a great respect and esteem for him; and during his whole subsequent life, he almost invariably won a regard from those of the Protestant community who were acquainted with him, second only to that of the Catholic people to whom he ministered. There were some exceptions to this rule, however. A few persons wrote to him in the most severe and reproachful terms. The usual pitiable charge, that his religious change was caused by mental derangement, was made by those whose wretched policy has always been to counteract as much as possible the influence of conversions to the Catholic Church by personal calumnies against the converts. {112} He was sometimes openly insulted, and much more frequently treated with coldness and neglect. Notwithstanding the respect with which so many still regarded him in their hearts, he was compelled to feel that he had become, in great measure, an alien and a stranger in the community where he had been born and bred. In a short time, his duty called him away from his native city, and, somewhat later, from his own State, into a distant part of the country. All the old associations of his early life were broken up; he had no longer an earthly home; and until his death he had, for the most part, no other ties and associations except those which were created by his religious profession and his sacerdotal office. Some six or seven persons were received into the Church soon after his conversion, three or four of whom were his parishioners; and some others may have been at a later period partly influenced by his example. But none of his intimate and particular friends were among the number, with the exception of his old and bosom friend and associate in the ministry, Mr. Lyman. His name and influence faded away, and were forgotten among the things of the past; while he, having bidden farewell to the world and taken up his cross, followed on after Christ, toward the crown he was soon to win, and was lost to the view of those among whom he had lived before, in the dust of the combat and labor of an arduous and obscure missionary career.