To N. A. Leikin, 21 March 1887. Moscow.

1 Written in Moscow on 21 March 1887 to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the humor magazine "Splinters" (Oskolki) and one of Chekhov’s earliest patrons, this is a brisk business letter meant chiefly to soothe an anxious editor. Leikin depended on Chekhov’s contributions to fill his pages on schedule, and Chekhov – juggling a story already dispatched to the "Peterburgskaya Gazeta" and another owed to Leikin – writes to promise delivery and settle his editor’s nerves before leaving on the extended southern journey (to the Donbass and the Crimea) that he was then a week and a half from beginning.

2 Alongside the shop-talk of deadlines and a shelved sketch ("Monologue of a Cat," pulled back for later reworking with a Petersburg setting), the letter turns playful in its request for correspondence during the trip, promising Leikin vivid reports of "deserts and steppes" and mock-heroic encounters with wolves and wild goats. It closes with a note on illness – a head cold with ear trouble – and a small piece of good news, that the former Moscow city mayor Sergei Tretyakov had bought two copies of Chekhov’s recent book, a modest but pleasing sign of sales.