To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 23–24 January 1889. Petersburg.

1 Written from Petersburg on 23 or 24 January 1889 to Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev, poet and editor of "Severny Vestnik," this is a short note falling in the same Petersburg stretch of the correspondence as the immediately surrounding letters, written while Chekhov was in the city for the staging of "Ivanov."

2 After the dateline (1) and salutation (2), Chekhov thanks Pleshcheyev for a warning about someone identified only as "Ya. P." and plans, half-jokingly, a small social lie: if he runs into this person he will claim – rather than admit he forgot an invitation – that he had to spend the whole evening looking after Shcheglov, who was supposedly too nervously overwrought to be left alone (3). He then declines an invitation to visit Pleshcheyev that same day, pleading an unfinished story, promises to come with Shcheglov the next day instead, and closes with thanks and respects (4), signing simply "A. Chekhov" (5).