To I. K. Kondratyev, 21 October 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow in October 1887 to Ivan Kuzmich Kondratyev (1849-1904), a minor Moscow writer of popular fiction, plays, and songs, who had evidently offered to help Chekhov obtain a painting by Alexei Savrasov, the landscape painter best known for "The Rooks Have Come Back" (1871).

2 The note is brief and purely practical: Chekhov declines whatever picture Kondratyev has proposed, explaining that his heart is set on "The Rooks" specifically, and that his straitened finances mean he cannot afford both. The closing line asks Kondratyev to pass on a bow to a third party, Nikolai Apollonovich, evidently a mutual acquaintance of the two men – and not a description of Kondratyev himself, who is addressed throughout as "Ivan Kuzmich."