To N. N. Obolonsky, 23 April 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 23 April 1889 (a Sunday) to Dr. Nikolai Nikolayevich Obolonsky, the Moscow physician already established elsewhere in this corpus as part of Chekhov’s circle of medical colleagues and friends. It follows the double-dateline pattern seen elsewhere in this stretch of the corpus (1-2: the formal "23 April 1889. Moscow." and the informal "23 April, Sunday.").

2 Chekhov opens in a mock-formal, joking register ("Sire!"), telling Obolonsky – currently in Petersburg – that by his return he and "the relics of Lina Salomonskaya" will be sitting on the porch listening to nightingales and frogs, and promising to keep him posted on "the artist’s" health by bulletin (3). He then jokes about which honor his family should bestow on Obolonsky for treating "our Minister of the Arts" – wishing he had the power to award the White Eagle, and settling for the more modest, invented "Stanislav" (4). He excuses the letter’s flat tone with a splitting headache, then narrates, in one long unbroken run-on sentence, a dissolute all-night wander through Moscow after a late committee meeting: a walk with Vl. Alexandrov talking plays and distilleries, watching the dawn, a stop in a disreputable tavern to watch billiards, then "disreputable places" where he talked with a math student and some musicians, home, vodka, a bite to eat, bed at 6 a.m., and a rude awakening (5). He closes with a blessing and thanks, notes he has learned from the newspapers that "Tolstoy" is ill and now understands why Obolonsky is in Petersburg (6), passes on regards from his brother Nikolai and his sister Maria (7), signs off (8), and adds a joking postscript granting Obolonsky permission to publish the letter in fifty years’ time in "Russkaya Starina" for a fee of 500 roubles (9).

4 No corruption or editorial gap markers appear in the source; the letter is complete and internally coherent as a single short document, with no sign of archival concatenation with unrelated back-matter.