To N. A. Leikin, 1885. Babkino.

Written from Babkino in early September 1885, near the end of the Chekhovs’ summer at the Kiselyov estate, this short letter goes again to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor-publisher of the Petersburg humor weekly Oskolki ("Splinters") and Chekhov’s principal editor at the time. Unlike the leisurely literary chat of his other Babkino letters, this one is pure business and a plea: Chekhov asks Leikin to press both the Petersburg Gazette and its office to send along an overdue fee – he’d asked for a hundred and fifty roubles, having earned more, and without it he risks being stranded in the country into October. He gives the exact mail dates the money could reach him in Voskresensk and underscores the urgency with a flourish of mock-formal, self-mocking prose ("giving my whole self over to hope, sweet messenger of heaven").

The postscript turns the money worry into a vivid weather complaint: relentless rain, a grey sky, and a pointed tally of exactly how many roubles (200) stand between him and "the warmth and civilization of Moscow" – against a single thaler in his pocket. The letter closes with a one-line cry, "Spring, where are you?!", conflating the season’s foulness with his own restlessness to be paid and gone. It is a compact, comic specimen of the money-and-weather letters Chekhov wrote Leikin throughout the mid-1880s, when free-lance fees from the popular press were his family’s chief support.