To N. A. Leikin, 17 July 1887. Babkino.

1 Written from Babkino, the Kiselyov estate where the Chekhovs summered in 1887, this short note went to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, the publisher-editor of the St. Petersburg humor magazine "Oskolki" ("Fragments"), for which Chekhov was a prolific contributor and to whom he had already written many times that year. Leikin had gone unusually quiet, and Chekhov writes chiefly to find out why.

2 The letter is brief and lightly needling in tone: Chekhov runs through the possible explanations for Leikin’s silence – travel to Finland, illness, or simple pique – and settles, half-joking, on the last, pressing Leikin to say what he has done to offend him. He closes with a short postscript noting that he is sending, alongside this letter, a story addressed to Nikolai Bilibin, another regular of Leikin’s circle and a frequent go-between in Chekhov’s dealings with the magazine.