person
Shpekin
also: Шпекин
An idle, curious compiler of a mock-scientific 'statistical table' of the contents of ordinary people's letters; his surname is borrowed directly from Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin, the letter-opening postmaster of Gogol's The Government Inspector (Revizor), signaling that he too pries into other people's correspondence.
Reading notes
- Statistics §2 One idle Shpekin
The narrator borrows the name of Gogol's postmaster from The Government Inspector (Revizor), the classic literary type of the postal official who cannot resist opening and reading other people's letters -- Chekhov's joke is that this Shpekin has gone one step further and turned his snooping into a pseudo-scientific 'statistical table.'