To Al. P. Chekhov, 2 March 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 2 March 1889 to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander, this short letter is mostly practical business dressed up in the brothers’ habitual joking register: money matters, a running discussion about Alexander buying a small farmstead, and a closing family jest.

2 Chekhov acknowledges receipt of 994 rubles Alexander has sent on and jokes that next season’s earnings should travel back under armed escort (4). He then works through the practicalities of the farmstead Alexander has been considering: how much capital is actually needed to buy land on mortgage, why Alexander’s proposed monthly installments make more sense as savings toward a lump sum, and the difference in cost between a proper farmstead with buildings, orchard, and river versus a couple of desyatinas of bare land (5-6). He offers to put his own summer earnings toward the project once he has some experience of it, notes that his royalty income from the Society of Dramatic Writers alone could cover interest on an estate worth up to 10,000 rubles, and urges his brother to save patiently rather than rush (7-8). He closes with brief news of his own work – a story soon going to "Novoye Vremya," a play planned for summer – and a joking sign-off in which he refers to himself, in the third person, as the husband of Klavdiya Mikhailovna (9-11).