To A. S. Lazarev, 10 November 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 10 November 1888 to Alexander Semyonovich Lazarev (who wrote under the pen name "Gruzinsky"), the young humorist and fellow "Oskolki" contributor Chekhov had been advising and promoting through the autumn of 1888. This short note follows through on that promotion: the "Saturday piece" Chekhov had passed along to Suvorin’s son in the 20 October letter is now about to appear in print.

2 Chekhov tells Lazarev, in the playful, third-person "offspring" language he elsewhere reserves for a writer’s own work, that his story will make its debut in Suvorin’s "New Times" on Saturday the 12th, and that Chekhov has already received the editorial thanks on Lazarev’s behalf. He warns that the piece was cut somewhat and urges Lazarev not to be upset, reassuring him that the strong middle of the story more than makes up for losses at the beginning and end; he encourages him not to get discouraged (as their mutual colleague Yezhov reportedly does over such things) and to shrug off the cuts, the money, and any of his own mistakes, closing the thought with a stage line – "Courage, old man!" – attributed to an unnamed marquis in an unnamed melodrama. He adds, in a postscript-like final line before the address, that he has entered Lazarev’s name down for a share of the memorial collection being put together for the recently deceased writer Vsevolod Garshin by the journal "Severny Vestnik" ("Northern Herald"). As in several other short notes of the period, the original preserves the address written on the reverse of the sheet – again addressed to Lazarev at the Teachers’ Seminary in Kirzhach, Vladimir province, where he was teaching – reproduced here as its own sequence of short sections, matching the convention of the 5 October 1888 note to Dyukovsky.