To A. S. Lazarev, 30 June 1887. Babkino.

1 Written on 30 June 1887 from Babkino, the Kiselyov family estate where Chekhov summered with his own family, this short note goes to Alexander Semyonovich Lazarev, who wrote under the pen name "Gruzinsky" and was a younger fellow contributor to the Moscow humor magazines. Chekhov is arranging a meeting in Moscow in early July, once he leaves the country for the city, and proposes an outing to the "Hermitage" restaurant.

2 The letter is brief and practical – travel logistics, a promised telegram, an appointed hour – but closes with a small piece of wordplay: Chekhov writes the ordinary parting phrase "be well" broken into an odd, misspelled shape and flags the joke himself in a parenthetical aside, a characteristic bit of self-conscious punning aimed at a young writer he mentored and teased in equal measure.