To K. S. Barantsevich, 8 December 1888. Petersburg.

1 Written from Petersburg on 8 December 1888 to Kazimir Stanislavovich Barantsevich, the novelist and fellow "Oskolki"/"New Times" writer to whom Chekhov had written six days earlier, on 2 December, en route to the capital. That earlier note had announced Chekhov’s imminent arrival and asked when Barantsevich could be found at home; by the date of this letter Chekhov has now been in Petersburg for several days and is declining an invitation – apparently arranged in the meantime – to dine with Barantsevich on the coming Thursday.

2 Chekhov explains, briefly and without detail, that circumstances beyond the control of the editorial office (almost certainly Suvorin’s "New Times," where Chekhov was occupied on this Petersburg trip) keep him from dining with Barantsevich on Thursday, and proposes that they will instead see each other at Leikin’s – Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, the "Oskolki" editor and one of the fixed points of Chekhov’s Petersburg social rounds on these visits. He adds that he is feeling somewhat unwell, probably from having eaten too much, signs himself, and sends his respects to Barantsevich’s family. As in the 2 December letter and other short notes of the period, the original preserves the address written on the reverse of the sheet, addressed to Barantsevich at the same Peski address given there, reproduced here as its own sequence of short sections.