“‘There were three persons who had the right to know what I am about to write. One died many years ago. Until another dies, these words are not to be read. In the course of nature, it is probable that the reading will fall to Theodore, not to my wife. If so, I believe that when Theodore reads them, I will already have been reunited to my wife and will have told her all that I write here, and so told it that she will feel my sincerity more clearly than I can make it felt by any written words. “‘Although born and raised in Millbank, I read law in the office of Judge Murdock in Bangor. My father had a great admiration for the judge and, dying early, before he had seen me admitted to the bar, asked his friend to take me into his office. If I have attained anything of note in my profession, I owe it largely to the fidelity with which Judge Murdock discharged his trust. “‘While in his office and shortly before I returned to Millbank, I became involved with a young woman of Bangor, who became by me the mother of the man now known as Theodore Wing--he will find his name legally established by action of the Legislature in 1841. Unfortunately, I can say little that is good of her; I will say nothing otherwise, if I can avoid it. I shirk no part of the responsibility for the wrong done. God alone knows that if she failed in true womanhood, then or after, it was not I who was wholly to blame. Thus much I can say, she was and is a woman of brilliant mind and shrewd resources, which have carried her far socially. “‘Fortunately I did not lack money, and so was able to provide comfortably for the woman and her child. As a matter of justice, I offered marriage, but she made it a condition that her child should be placed in some institution, urging that it would otherwise always be a stigma upon us. To this I would not consent, and her election to forego the vindication of marriage put me on my guard, for I could not believe that a woman of her temperament would deliberately elect to go through life encumbered with an unfathered child. The event proved me right, for within three months she had placed the infant in an institution for orphans, and returned to Bangor with a plausible tale accounting for her absence. “‘She, of course, counted safely on my silence, but I did not hesitate to make it a condition that I should take possession of the child for whom I provided, rearing him in such a way that he has taken a place in the world equal to that of his parents, and as untrammelled by his unsuspected birth as it is possible for one to be. My marriage has never been blessed with children, and thus to him and my wife of thirty years, the two on earth whose claim upon me is most sacred, I am able to leave all that I have accumulated. “‘He has been to me all that a son could be. Let this narrative be to him, if he ever reads it, an explanation of anything in which I have been less than a father to him.