"DEAREST FRIEND AND BROTHER: My heart is breaking as I write, but I must talk with you once more. I think of the days and the many summer nights I have spent in happy walk's with you, my one ever-loving friend. It could not have been I; it was some one else. God is my witness, and so is my mother in heaven, that I never wilfully wronged a fellow-being. If I ever wronged or grieved you, dear brother, forgive me. I did it not intentionally, and humbly beg your forgiveness. I am not fit to live. "Here is my confession; I see no escape but death. I know that to kill myself is a sin, but to live is a greater. Every day I am a murderer. I can bear it no longer. I spend my nights in weeping, and all the time despise myself for it. I might have been a quiet, honest, upright man, had I been allowed to remain in the beaten track; but I was not made for contest. I weep to think of what I have become; I who was once so different! If I live, my life will be a greater shame upon my children than my death. That will be soon forgotten; the next season the grass will be growing on my grave. By your faithful heart, and by all the acts of kindness you have ever done me, I conjure you to be a father to my forsaken children. My poor children,--I dare not think of them. I was foolish enough once to fancy I could make a good father; but I cannot; I can be nothing. If love is not freely given me, I cannot win it; that is my misery, that is my ruin. A wall of glass is about me that I try in vain to surmount. My mother was right in saying we can sow and plant and force a harvest by our industry, but one thing must grow of itself, and that is love. It will not grow for me where I had a right to look for it. "Take my children out of the village when I am buried. I would not have them see me. Pray the mayor and the minister to have me laid beside my parents and my brethren. They were happier than I. Why was I alone left to live for such an end as this? "You are my little William's godfather,--take him now for your own child. You always said he had a taste for drawing; take him to your own home and teach him. If it be possible, be reconciled with my uncle Petrovitsch. Perhaps he will do something for my children when I am gone, for I am sure he likes you; I would not tell you now what I did not know to be true. You may still be good friends together. His heart is kinder than he will acknowledge, as my mother always said. My wife--but I will say nothing of her. If my children are happy, let her be forgiven for my sake. "I have been driven to hearing and saying such words as I had never imagined tongue could utter.