To N. A. Leikin, 11 November 1884. Moscow.

A brisk business-and-gossip letter to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the Petersburg humor magazine Oskolki, written the same hour Chekhov received Leikin’s own letter. He pushes back on Leikin’s suggestion that he is padding his stories ("sucking things out of his finger"), agrees to write on the notorious Rykov bank-fraud trial for the Peterburgskaya Gazeta, and defends an item he had published without naming names – a small point of professional trust between the two men. In between comes an alarming telegram from the poet Liodor Palmin about his common-law wife Polya, which turns into a wry anecdote when Chekhov arrives to find her entertaining guests instead. The closing lines mention the poet Medvedev and the journalist Ryskin, both minor figures on the fringes of Moscow’s popular press.