To N. M. Yezhov, 7 January 1892. Petersburg.

Dated 7 January 1892, from Petersburg, to Nikolai Mikhailovich Yezhov, the same correspondent addressed a few days earlier in (2 January 1892).

The letter opens with a single sardonic line answering some "thunderbolt" complaint of Yezhov’s about the newspaper editor Sergei Khudekov – Chekhov tells him he has only damaged himself by it. The remainder of the letter is written in the hand of Anna Ivanovna Suvorina (wife of Chekhov’s publisher A. S. Suvorin), evidently at Chekhov’s dictation or with his sign-off, teasing Yezhov and others over a silver commemorative jeton from the "Peterburgskaya gazeta" anniversary (the same jetons mentioned in): she quotes the proverbial Russian rendering of Shakespeare – "I do not value the gift, but the love is dear" – contrasts her own good grace in accepting a merely silver jeton with how she would have treated a gold one, notes that Leikin brought her 35 rubles besides, and closes with a mock-stern call to calm passions, "resist not evil," and remember their "teacher" Tolstoy, before bows and a promise to meet soon. The closing valediction and signature are Chekhov’s own.