To A. S. Lazarev, August 1887. Babkino.

1 A very short note written in early August 1887 from Babkino, the Kiselyov family’s country estate near Moscow where Chekhov spent several summers, to the young writer Alexander Semyonovich Lazarev, who wrote under the pen name "Gruzinsky." Lazarev was one of the circle of humor-magazine contributors Chekhov mentored and joked with in the 1880s. The letter urges Lazarev to come to Babkino at once rather than wait around in Moscow for Chekhov’s brother Ivan, whose return was uncertain.

2 The letter’s most notable feature is its form: after the brief business message and Chekhov’s signature, the sheet continues with what reads as an unrelated household jotting – a short list ("1 lb of ham sausage,5 lemons and 4 heads of cabbage") followed by a one-line remark on the fine weather. This is evidently a shopping or errand memorandum caught on the same page as the letter, preserved here exactly as it appears in the source, with each fragment kept as its own numbered section rather than merged into the letter proper.