To M. M. Chekhov, 25 September 1885. Moscow.

A brief, businesslike note to Chekhov’s younger brother Mikhail Pavlovich, written just after Chekhov’s return to Moscow in the autumn of 1885. At this date Chekhov was practicing medicine alongside his writing, and the letter concerns that practice directly: he tells Mikhail that he is back and available, as arranged through a Dr. I. E., to see boys referred to him for treatment, and gives his consulting hours – mornings until early afternoon, 10 to 2. He promises to notify Mikhail promptly of any change of address or hours, underscoring how casually the family’s medical and personal errands ran together.

The closing lines shift register, from clinical to affectionate: Chekhov asks after his brother’s health and invites him simply to visit for an evening, signing off with his usual warm but economical "regards" and a handshake. Slight and occasional as it is, the letter is a useful reminder that Chekhov’s medical career was not a youthful footnote but an ongoing, everyday practice running in parallel with his literary work throughout the mid-1880s, and that his letters to Mikhail – the sibling who would later become his first biographer and archivist – often mixed practical family business with brotherly warmth.