To N. A. Leikin, 7 April 1887. Taganrog.

1 Written at Easter 1887 from Chekhov’s native Taganrog, where he was visiting on one of his periodic returns to the south. His correspondent, Nikolai Leikin, was the editor of the Petersburg humor magazine "Oskolki" ("Fragments"), a steady patron and something of a mentor-employer for the young Chekhov, who supplied him with short comic sketches for pay. The letter mixes holiday greeting, travel plans, and a favor asked of Leikin’s masseur – the sort of miscellany typical of their working correspondence.

2 The letter is notable for its unsparing sketch of provincial Taganrog: a town of "sixty thousand inhabitants" given over, in Chekhov’s telling, to eating, drinking, and breeding, with "no patriots, no men of business, no poets, not even a decent baker." The passage is often quoted as an early instance of Chekhov’s lifelong impatience with the torpor of Russian provincial life, delivered here with the same comic exaggeration he was selling to Leikin’s magazine. It closes with a wry account of a bout of traveler’s stomach trouble and the inconvenient placement of the outdoor privy.