To N. M. Lintvareva, 14 December 1891. Moscow.

Dated 14 December 1891, from Moscow, to Natalya Mikhailovna Lintvaryova, the same correspondent as.

Chekhov opens with a practical note about a benefit "Miscellany" being sent to her by "Russkiye Vedomosti," then reports that his sister Masha is setting out to visit her on the 22nd, with further travel to follow. He describes a month-long bout of influenza that confined him to bed and left him coughing and thin, and announces his decision to leave Moscow, giving Masha authority to buy a country place (with A. I. Smagin already brokering a farmstead). The bulk of the letter turns to famine-relief work: a colleague named Savich has gotten free to help, Chekhov himself is fundraising ("playing the charity lady") and has sent 116 roubles, and he describes the relief effort underway in Nizhny Novgorod province – a district superintendent working an underserved district, buying peasants’ horses to feed over the winter and return in spring – giving Lintvaryova the field address in case Ivanenko gives a benefit concert. He notes the death of Kharitonenko, then turns to the death of Lintvaryova’s sister Zinaida Mikhailovna, offering blunt, characteristically unsentimental comfort (that death was a release from suffering, "and yet all the same it is terribly sad") and mentioning a visit from Garshin’s widow, who had known the sister. The letter closes with greetings and an affectionate mock double-signature.

The tone moves between brisk practical business (the newspaper subscription, Masha’s travel, the horse-buying logistics of famine relief) and genuine, unsentimentally stated grief over recent deaths.