To M. P. Chekhova, 3 April 1887. Orel.

1 A brief postcard-style note, written before dawn on 3 April 1887 in Orel, to Chekhov’s sister Maria Pavlovna Chekhova. It was sent early in his month-long journey south to Taganrog and the steppe country of his childhood – the trip that would later feed the material of "The Steppe" – and catches him mid-transit, a few hours into the trip by rail with time only to scrawl a line before the train or the town moved on.

2 The note is almost entirely logistical: the hour of arrival, a wry observation about the coffee, a remark that the fields are already bare of snow, and an instruction that the household defer to their brother Ivan ("Vanya") in his absence, since he is "level-headed and has character." Chekhov explains he has no envelopes on hand and so cannot send along the fuller travel diary he was evidently keeping for the family. The address on the reverse – to the Chekhov family’s Moscow apartment on Kudrinskaya-Sadovaya – is preserved as part of the letter’s original card format.