To Al. P. Chekhov, 10–11 January 1888. Moscow.

1 A short, jocular note written in Moscow on 10 or 11 January 1888 to Chekhov’s elder brother, Alexander Pavlovich Chekhov, who was then living in St. Petersburg and working at the newspaper "Novoye Vremya" ("New Time"). Chekhov addresses him with the playful nickname "Gusinsky" ("Goosey"), one of the family’s private joke-names.

2 The letter mixes two requests inside a comic frame – first "as a medical man" (Chekhov, a trained physician, asks for details of an unnamed relative’s abscess and operation), then "as a famous man of letters" (he asks Alexander to chase down 36 rubles owed him by the newspaper for a New Year’s story). It closes with a wry New Year’s greeting undercut by Chekhov reporting his own intestinal complaint, and the address panel with a St. Petersburg delivery address.