jy child with even a look. I am strong enough to empty the bitter cup of suffering I have brought upon myself. I deserve it, I can endure it all myself. If it must be, I am ready to expire enduring; I do not want anybody in all God’s world but you, my dear and only friend, that you may for a time—I do not know if it will be long or short—take care, fatherly, loving care, of my little son.
“I know I am not deceiving myself; I know that is just as surely as the sun abounds in warmth, so does your heart overflow with Christian charity—that charity which judges human faults and merits fairly and without prejudice.
“I build and rely on this in sending you my child. I know I ought to have written first to ask your permission; but God knows I was not able. I felt that, if I was to do the deed at all, I must, as it were, throw my child suddenly into your kind arms; for, had I acted slowly and deliberately, I should never have found strength or resolution to part from him, and we might both, in all probability, have been lost. But by my taking this step we may perhaps be spared, by God’s mercy and your charity.
“My little one was born in Prague, this year, on the 1st of March, just at midnight, and was baptized on the 3rd, with the name of Joseph, the name of my late honest father, who was taken from us just at the time of my worst suffering, after having laboured all his life for the well-being of his family.
“I beg Miss Naninka, with clasped hands, to take motherly care of my child—not to let him want for anything; to love him, and to have holy patience with him. If I am never able to do so, perhaps he will one day have it in his power to repay her for all her trouble and
