To N. A. Leikin, 23 December 1884. Moscow.

By December 1884 Chekhov was twenty-four and had just qualified as a physician, but his real livelihood was still the comic press. Nikolai Leikin, the addressee, was the editor of "Oskolki" ("Splinters"), the Petersburg weekly for which Chekhov supplied a steady stream of stories, sketches, and the "Moscow feuilleton" column referred to here; Leikin was also his most demanding editor and, at times, his creditor by proxy through the very payments this letter chases. The names that pass through the letter belong to that same world of the minor illustrated press: Liodor Palmin, a poet and fellow contributor to the humor magazines; Pastukhov, publisher of the "Moscow Listok"; and the journals "Peterburgskaya Gazeta,Razvlechenie," and "Budilnik," all outlets Chekhov wrote for on and off through the early 1880s to make ends meet.

The letter is a compact year-end status report: holiday greetings, a rundown of pieces in progress or already sent, and then, in the same breath, a plain account of being broke – publishers slow to pay, a debt collector’s disappointment turned into a joke, a brother too ill to work. The gloom is characteristically undercut by wit ("sitting on nothing but beans," a hoped-for payment that turns into "a slap in the face"), the same instinct for turning hardship into a punchline that runs through Chekhov’s early comic writing.