To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 4 October 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 4 October 1888 to the poet and editor Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheev, part of the same October run of letters as Chekhov’s 2 October letter to the publisher Aleksey Suvorin and his earlier 30 September letter to Pleshcheev. Chekhov reports having finished and submitted a story to "Severny Vestnik" ("The Northern Herald") and describes a hard, cashless September in which he pawned belongings and paid down part of a debt to Suvorin.

2 He passes on theater business regarding "Brass Foreheads," a play by Ivan Leontiev (writing as I. Shcheglov, whom Chekhov elsewhere calls "Jean"), including the royalty percentages paid by the Korsh theater and a correction to the per-act fee Korsh pays the playwrights’ society. He mentions a visit from Pavel Lintvaryov – a member of the Lintvaryov family, at whose Sumy estate the Chekhovs summered, here trying (unsuccessfully, Chekhov predicts) to enroll at the Petrovsky Academy while under police surveillance. He then turns to Shcheglov himself, in Moscow at the time: his play "The Summer Husband" failed locally but is expected to do better in Petersburg and the provinces, and Chekhov gives frank, unsparing craft advice, urging him to abandon his moralizing and his single stock setting/character type and instead write a full-length comedy. He notes that "Georges" – the family friend Egor Mikhailovich Lintvaryov – will soon visit Pleshcheev in Petersburg, references a request made in a letter to Anna Mikhailovna (probably Yevreinova, the editor at "Severny Vestnik") not to cut lines from his story, and closes with warm regards.