To A. S. Suvorin, 20 October 1891. Moscow.

a letter dated 20 October 1891, from Moscow, to Aleksey Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher/editor of "Novoye Vremya," written the day after Chekhov read a "little letter" (a short feuilleton) of Suvorin’s on the 1891 famine-relief controversy, and touching money, travel plans, and a request on behalf of a young writer.

Chekhov opens by praising Suvorin’s recent published piece as warm, beautiful, and true in every thought, and extends its argument with an angry aside on the hypocrisy of the well-fed moralizing at the hungry – comparing it to lecturing a man sick with typhus, and noting sardonically that the state, government ministers, the nobility, bishops, and the Imperial Guard are all far deeper in debt than any peasant scolded over fifteen rubles of tax arrears. He then lays out his immediate itinerary: finishing off a long, tedious commissioned story for an unnamed "Collection," then travelling down the Volga and overland into the province governed by General Baranov (part of his ongoing famine-relief fieldwork), then on to see Suvorin; he declines to visit Suvorin’s Zaraysk estate, saying he cannot judge land properly under snow and bare trees. He confirms receipt of a further 400 rubles against earnings from "The Duel," tallies the running total against the roughly 1400 he reckons is owed him, and notes the rest will go to clearing his debts by spring, after which he means to draw fresh advances from every editorial office and "run off to Java." He comments on a reply from Viskovatov printed in "Novosti," calling it snide and questioning Viskovatov’s command of Russian while affirming that Suvorin’s own feuilleton read as unmistakably pointed. A short, weary passage follows on the dullness of his enforced idleness in Moscow – wanting patients and a hospital as a doctor, or the thick of public/political life as a writer, rather than confinement at his flat on Malaya Dmitrovka with his pet mongoose. He closes with a joking appeal that Suvorin, while fishing on his Zaraysk estate, arrange to publish "the English humorist Bernard," sends greetings to Suvorin’s family, and signs off. A postscript-like final section reports that N. M. Yezhov has sent Suvorin a story, "Petty Natures," and asks whether it is acceptable.