To N. A. Leikin, 8 February 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 8 February 1887 to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the "Oskolki" ("Fragments") magazine and Chekhov’s principal publisher and patron in these years, this letter mixes business with the two men’s habitual gossip about literary Petersburg and Moscow. Chekhov encloses a new story and reports on his working pace, then untangles a small mix-up over a delivered bundle of periodical issues for which his household lacked the fifty-kopeck delivery fee.

2 The letter’s most substantial passage is Chekhov’s aside on the poet Semyon Nadson, who had died the previous month and whose posthumous reputation Chekhov defends as deserved compensation for the slanders Nadson suffered in life. He then turns to an anecdote about a memorial service (panikhida) for Pushkin in Moscow, using the poor conduct of female students and "literary ladies" in attendance, and the shabbiness of the ceremony itself, as an occasion for wry social observation about the gap between education and genuine good breeding. The letter closes with domestic banter about the coming spring and a joke about a slimming remedy prescribed by his physician, Grigory Zakharyin.