To M. V. Kiseleva, 17 September 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 17 September 1888 to Maria Vladimirovna Kiseleva, a family friend and writer who, with her husband Alexei Sergeyevich Kiselev, owned the Babkino estate where the Chekhovs summered. Kiseleva was evidently away from Moscow at the time, and the short, telegraphic note is a bulletin sent to reassure her about her young son, whom the Chekhov household called by the nickname "Finik" and who was boarding with the Chekhovs while attending school in Moscow (compare the companion note of 23 September, letter 485, which likewise reports on Finik’s health).

2 The whole letter is a small comic anecdote: a schoolmate named Ivanov comes to deliver the day’s homework assignment to Finik, and the two boys’ mutual awkwardness is played for humor, down to Ivanov’s gruff, wordless exit, which Chekhov mock-diagnoses as the manner of "a socialist." Chekhov adds the reassurance Kiseleva was presumably waiting for – no cough – and closes with a joking request that she budget compensation for the "damages" inflicted by the stream of schoolboy visitors (generic surnames – the Russian equivalent of "Tom, Dick, and Harry").