To N. M. Yezhov and A. S. Lazarev, 13–14 August 1887. Babkino.

1 This brief comic letter of 13 or 14 August 1887, written from the Kiselyov family estate at Babkino where Chekhov summered, is addressed jointly to two young contributors to the Moscow humor magazines: Nikolai Mikhailovich Ezhov and Alexander Semyonovich Lazarev, who wrote under the pen name "Gruzinsky." Both were part of the circle of comic writers around Nikolai Leikin’s journal "Oskolki" (Splinters), for which Chekhov himself wrote.

2 Chekhov casts the letter as a mock-legal document, offering to "commit forgery and go to Siberia" – presumably to certify or forge some paperwork on Ezhov’s behalf – but only on a set of comic conditions numbered like legal clauses: that Gruzinsky stop quarreling with the touchy Leikin, that he bring ham sausage, and that Ezhov report which eye is troubling him (diagnosed as keratitis, inflammation of the cornea) so a medical certificate can be arranged through the journalist and censor Alexei Kurepin and his notary friend. The letter ends with a full mock-formal envelope address, playfully addressing Ezhov as "His High Nobility," a title of rank Ezhov did not actually hold – part of the letter’s running joke of bureaucratic and social self-importance.