I have striven with disease, that I might reach this place, and
if possible, obtain your forgiveness 'ere my eyes shall close in death.
I know I have darkened a life, which, but for me, might have been bright
and joyous. It is too much for me to expect your forgiveness, yet I
would hear you pronounce that blessed word before I die. You may _now_
believe me when I say, that it was my love for you which led me to
deceive you. Knowing my wife's dread of any publicity being attached to
her name, I thought the knowledge that I had a living wife would never
reach you. Of the sinfulness of my conduct I did not at that time pause
to think. I now sincerely thank my wife for preventing a marriage which
in the sight of God, must have been but mockery. I now speak truly when
I say to you, I never loved my wife; I married her for money. As I had
no affection for her, my former habits of dissipation soon regained
their hold on me. It will afford me some comfort to know that I have
made strictly true confession to you. I have not, to my knowledge, a
living relation in the wide world; and, till I met with you, I knew not
the meaning of the word love; and I still believe that, had I met you
earlier in life, your influence would have caused me to become a useful
man and an ornament to my profession.
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