To V. A. Tikhonov, 10 February 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 10 February 1889 to Vladimir Alekseevich Tikhonov, the playwright and editor already established in this corpus through the 1888-89 correspondence. The occasion is Tikhonov’s debut as a theater critic, apparently a review published in the Petersburg weekly "Nedelya" ("The Week").

2 After the dateline (1), Chekhov opens (2) with mock ceremony, saying he cannot properly congratulate Tikhonov on his critical debut because "Nedelya" is as hard to find in Moscow as a white elephant, and asks Tikhonov to send him the issue containing the review, which he promises to file among the many reviews of "Ivanov" already collected in his archive. He then turns (3) to a teasing assessment of Tikhonov’s temperament – too soft, sentimental, and lazy to make a good critic, unlike the ruthless Suvorin – closing the thought with the gnomic tag "Honor alike to the moon, alike to the sun," before suggesting (4) that Tikhonov instead write and deliver a paper on Gorokhovaya. A short aside on his health (5) reports a bout of hemorrhoids brought on by drinking in Petersburg, followed by a closing wish of good health and regards (6), the signature (7), a repeated date (8), and a closing complaint that he has run out of writing paper (9).