To M. V. Kiseleva, 2 November 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 2 November 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. This letter is a fuller, more emphatic health-and-conduct bulletin about the Kiselevs’ son Sergey ("Seryozha"), who was boarding with the Chekhovs in Moscow to attend school – the same boy called "Finik" in the earlier notes to his mother of 17 and 23 September 1888 (letters 484 and 485) and in the longer report to his father of 20 October 1888 (letter 3-508). Here, writing directly to an anxious mother rather than to the father, Chekhov drops the household nickname entirely and names the boy by his given name and patronymic register throughout ("Сережа,Сергею"), continuing the same referent as those earlier letters.

2 Chekhov opens by explaining that Masha (his sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova) has relayed the gist of a worried letter from Kiseleva, and he responds with an unusually insistent, repeated word-of-honor reassurance that Seryozha is in perfect health – not coughing, in good spirits, doing tolerably at his studies, and showing no sign whatsoever that could justify her anxiety. He promises to notify her immediately, hiding nothing, should anything change, stressing that he has no right to conceal any real danger from her or from her husband. He then gives two vivid daily-routine vignettes – the boy tumbling noisily down the stairs each morning on his way to school with the maid Olga seeing him off, and returning at midday in his long coat with his satchel like a freight car on his back – as concrete, physician’s-eye evidence of the boy’s ordinary good health and high spirits. After a curt "That is all," Chekhov shifts to his own news: money is tight but an advance is expected from Petersburg, his medical practice continues in a small way, and a "foolish" vaudeville he wrote is enjoying surprising success on stage despite a hostile notice in the Moscow Gazette. He gently chides Kiseleva for not writing for the journal Rodnik, suggests writing as a remedy for low spirits, invites her to visit at the earliest opportunity, and closes with regards to her household and his signature.