Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky

My beloved Makar Alexievitch -- So eager am I to do something that will please and divert you in return for your care, for your ceaseless efforts on my behalf -- in short, for your love for me -- that I have decided to beguile a leisure hour for you by delving into my locker, and extracting thence the manuscript which I send you herewith. I began it during the happier period of my life, and have continued it at intervals since. So often have you asked me about my former existence -- about my mother, about Pokrovski, about my sojourn with Anna Thedorovna, about my more recent misfortunes; so often have you expressed an earnest desire to read the manuscript in which (God knows why) I have recorded certain incidents of my life, that I feel no doubt but that the sending of it will give you sincere pleasure. Yet somehow I feel depressed when I read it, for I seem now to have grown twice as old as I was when I penned its concluding lines. Ah, Makar Alexievitch, how weary I am -- how this insomnia tortures me! Convalescence is indeed a hard thing to bear!

B. D.