To N. A. Leikin, 23 April 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 23 April 1888 (Easter Sunday) to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor of the humor magazine "Oskolki" ("Fragments") and one of Chekhov’s earliest patrons. It opens with Easter greetings and news of Chekhov’s summer plans – he is about to leave with his family for the Lintvaryov estate near Sumy, in Ukraine.

2 The letter’s core is an awkward money matter. The writer Alexander Alexeyevich Pleshcheyev has told Chekhov, in front of his brothers, that Leikin supposedly sent him a hundred-rouble Christmas bonus, and that Leikin had said as much to Sergei Khudekov (editor of the "Peterburgskaya gazeta") and to Pleshcheyev himself. Chekhov, mock- gracious, thanks Leikin sarcastically: he wants no unearned reward, and he sees through the gesture – Leikin meant to shame Khudekov, in front of others, into paying Chekhov the customary bonus that paper owed him, not to hand over money himself. Chekhov is grateful for the goodwill but chides Leikin for airing it so publicly, at the risk of his reputation. The letter closes with domestic business: missing and stolen books from his library (he asks Leikin to replace one and send several others, inscribed, care of Leikin’s assistant Anna Ivanovna), a note that he has finished a short novella, and a request that Leikin write back.