To M. M. Dyukovsky, April 1886. Moscow.

1 A very short note from Chekhov, written in Moscow in early April 1886, to Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, a childhood friend from Taganrog who recurs throughout this stretch of the correspondence. Chekhov reports that "Ivan" – likely a servant or household hand – is unwell with fever and diarrhea, and that he has, in his capacity as the household’s resident physician, ordered him kept home. He closes by asking Dyukovsky not to be annoyed over some matter concerning the journal "Russkaya Mysl" ("Russian Thought").

2 Slight as it is, the note is a good specimen of Chekhov’s private comic voice: the mock-legalistic "by the authority vested in me" and the deadpan mathematical flourish "fever and diarrhea squared" both show the trained physician turning his own clinical vocabulary into a joke for a friend. The unexplained aside about "Russkaya Mysl’" is a small window onto Chekhov’s ongoing, sometimes prickly dealings with that journal and its editors in this period.