To V. A. Vagner, 10 October 1891. Moscow.

Written from Moscow on 10 October 1891 to a correspondent the source records only as "V. A. Wagner." This is not the same person as Nikolai Petrovich Wagner, the zoologist and Chekhov’s houseguest at Bogimovo that summer who appears under his own initials elsewhere in the 1891 correspondence – the initials here are distinct, and nothing in the letter’s content ties it to Nikolai Petrovich. The editorial record does not further identify "V. A. Wagner"; this edition preserves the initials as the source gives them rather than assuming a link to the better-documented Wagner of the Bogimovo letters.

The letter is short and occasional. Chekhov reports that a feuilleton he co-wrote, "The Conjurers" (Fokusniki), ran in Novoye Vremya the day before despite his effort to telegraph Suvorin and have it pulled – a small, characteristic note on how little control a contributor had once a piece was in the pipeline. He mentions an upcoming trip to Nizhny Novgorod province before the 15th, sends respects to a Maria Apollonovna and a Polina Nikolayevna (presumably the addressee’s household), and closes with plans to call on Wagner after his return. A postscript-like addition names a "professor Anuchin" as a new acquaintance – almost certainly Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin, the Moscow University anthropologist and geographer prominent in the same scientific circles as the Bogdanov-Timiryazev dispute Chekhov describes in the Suvorin letter of that same season, though the text itself gives no more than the surname and title. The closing lines are the ordinary furniture of Chekhov’s correspondence: a complaint of solitary evenings relieved only by visitors, and a general greeting from his household.