To N. A. Leikin, 16 February 1886. Moscow.

1 Written in Moscow on the night of 16 February 1886 to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor of the humor magazine Oskolki ("Splinters") and Chekhov’s publisher and mentor in these early years. The letter is a bundle of small business and small talk: thanks for proof corrections to the story "Anyuta" and for a batch of proofs and a signature of Chekhov’s forthcoming collection; discussion of its typeface, and the still-unsettled question of a title, which the two had apparently already agreed would be Motley Stories, published under Chekhov’s early pen name "A. Chekhonte." Chekhov reports he is laid up with a lanced boil on his foot and cannot go out, mentions a missing dog-shaped bust meant for the book’s vignette, worry over a silent correspondent nicknamed "Agafopod," a recommendation of a Saltykov-Shchedrin tale in that week’s newspaper, a visit to the poet Liodor Palmin, and messages for two other Oskolki staff, Bilibin and Leikin’s prolific young secretary.

2 The letter is a vivid specimen of Chekhov’s working correspondence with Leikin during the Oskolki years: brisk, funny, self-deprecating about his own health and finances, and full of the day-to-day mechanics of getting a book into print – proofreading, typefaces, titles, illustrations – alongside literary gossip and a closing wish to visit Petersburg. The offhand joke that a rescued manuscript is "movable property," and the closing note that his medical practice is slowly picking up, are characteristic of the mix of doctor, journalist, and rising story-writer he was in early 1886.