To the Chekhovs, 31 December 1891. Petersburg.

Dated 31 December 1891, from Petersburg, addressed collectively to "the Chekhovs" – his family.

Chekhov sends New Year’s greetings and encloses four coupons (i.e. interest coupons, a form of cash gift) for his father, mother, brother Ivan, and sister Masha (Maria). He reports on two discouraging telegrams about a farmstead purchase in Mirgorod district: the Sorochintsy property has a fine location and orchard but an old, cramped house needing costly repairs and lying forty versts from the station; Masha appears to have abandoned it in favor of the Yatsenko farmstead, which has more land and a river but only a hut and sheds, meaning building work in spring – Chekhov, who has seen it himself, calls it beautiful but isolated, and notes the family will have to take up farming given how much land comes with it. He gives family news (his brother Alexander and his children are well; his own health has improved since Moscow), mentions that the family will start receiving the "Peterburgskaya Gazeta" from the New Year after its publisher Khudekov visited and offered him 40 kopecks a line, sends holiday wishes and greetings to two household members, signs off, adds a postscript-like promise to send money, and closes with a one-line note that his story "Kashtanka" is currently with the censor.

The tone is warm, practical, and typical of Chekhov’s family correspondence – affectionate greetings interleaved with businesslike detail about land, money, and his own writing.