To I. L. Leontyev, 10 January 1888. Moscow.

1 Written in Moscow on 10 January 1888 to Ivan Leontievich Leontiev, the writer better known by his pen name "Shcheglov," a close literary friend whom Chekhov here addresses by the nickname "Alba." The letter is a rapid-fire batch of personal business and banter: illegible handwriting, a returned manuscript, journal gossip, a joking threat over an unreturned photograph, and holiday plans.

2 Notable content includes Chekhov’s praise-with-a-barb for Shcheglov’s story "Mignon" (urging him to write more, not less), an invented "Socrates" aphorism used as a joke, an anecdote about the actor Vladimir Davydov reading aloud from Tolstoy’s "The Power of Darkness" (Chekhov suggests Davydov, the actor, should play the character Akim), and a mock-ledger of upcoming drinking occasions – St. Tatiana’s Day and Chekhov’s own name-day – tallied up in the closing line as a German loanword for a hangover, "Katzenjammer," which the source glosses in a footnote. Other named figures mentioned only in passing are P. P. Gorlenko (whose letter about Shcheglov’s work Chekhov is returning), the poet A. N. Pleshcheev, and the writer Kazimir Barantsevich, whose novella "The Slave-Girl" Chekhov had just received.