I cannot find the strength, now that I face it, to tell you what you may find if you follow the lure that the other envelope holds forth to you.
There is always the hope that Fortune may be kind to me at last, and smile upon my memory by never letting you know why I have been the sort of man you have known, and not the jovial, genial companion that a father should be.

But there are certain things, my son, which defeat a man.

It killed your mother--every day since her death I have been haunted by that fact; my prayer is that it may not kill you, spiritually, if not physically.

Therefore is it not better that it remain behind a cloud until such time as Fortune may reveal it--and hope that such a time will never come?
I think so--not for myself, for when you read this, I shall be gone; but for you, that you may not be handicapped by the knowledge of the thing which whitened my hair and aged me, long before my time.
If he lives, and I am sure he does, there is one who will hurry to your aid as soon as he knows you need him.

Accept his counsels, laugh at his little eccentricities if you will, but follow his judgment implicitly.