To Al. P. Chekhov, 20 April 1887. en route to Novocherkassk.

This is a brief travel note to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander, written on 20 April 1887 while Chekhov was en route to Novocherkassk along the Donets railway – part of the long southern journey that spring that took him back to his native Taganrog and the Don Steppe, a trip that would soon feed directly into the writing of "The Steppe." The letter is dashed off mid-travel: a dateline, a line reporting he is alive and well, a mild complaint that Alexander has not written, and an instruction to address future letters to Taganrog instead.

The one phrase worth flagging is the parenthetical "a tablespoonful every hour" describing his rail journey along the Donets line – a wry medical joke, likening the slow, halting progress of the train to a prescribed dose of medicine, fitting for a letter from a practicing physician. The note also preserves its own material form in the source: a closing line ("On the back") followed by the address as written on the reverse of the card or envelope, giving Alexander’s Petersburg address in full.