To Al. P. Chekhov, 3–4 February 1887. Moscow.

1 Written in Moscow on February 3 or 4, 1887, to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander Pavlovich Chekhov, then living in Petersburg and working as a journalist and customs official. Short and businesslike in the brothers’ habitual teasing register, it is chiefly a commission: Anton wants twenty copies of Pushkin’s works in Alexei Suvorin’s cheap edition, unobtainable in Moscow, and asks Alexander to buy and ship them by the following Monday, promising to reimburse him.

2 The letter’s brevity does not blunt its characteristic mock-abuse: Anton calls Alexander a "man of independent means" living off their father’s goodwill, then a "scoundrel" for letting their younger brothers subscribe to a publication called "The Sun," and closes with mundane family news (a request for trousers held by their brother Nikolai, their mother’s question about Alexander’s infant son Kokosha) and a literary aside praising a piece called "The Schoolboy’s Diary" while warning Alexander off using the surname of a real acquaintance.