To N. A. Leikin, 9 June 1887. Babkino.

1 Written on 9 June 1887 from the Kiselyov family’s estate at Babkino, where the Chekhovs summered, to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor of the Petersburg comic weekly Oskolki (Fragments) and Chekhov’s chief publisher and correspondent in these early years. Leikin had evidently invited Chekhov to visit him at his dacha near Lake Ladoga; Chekhov is writing to explain that a colleague’s request to cover his medical duties as a zemstvo (rural district) doctor may force him to cancel the trip.

2 The letter is vintage Chekhov-to-Leikin: practical business (the promised visit, an undelivered letter gone astray to Taganrog) folded into wry domestic comedy – foul weather, family colds, extortionate cabmen, and a small farce involving boys selling him woodpeckers, which he first frees and then, when they multiply, cuffs. A closing joke proposes a caption for a satirical drawing of the poet Palmin’s household move, and a final, one-line postscript – "Don’t forget the loud and stinking dogs" – is left without explanation, evidently a private joke or standing request between the two men.