However, all this is of the past and can now interest you but little.

You have had your own sorrows and trials, at which, believe me, I sincerely grieved.

And now to my object in writing to you.

Although still comparatively a young man, I have not many years to live.

When last in London I consulted two of the first physicians, and they agreed that, as I had already suspected, I was suffering from heart disease, or rather, perhaps, from an enfeebled state of my heart, which may at any moment cease to do its work.
"Naturally then, I have turned my thoughts as to whom I should leave my property.