To F. A. Kumanin, 26 January 1892. Moscow.

a dateline, a short marginal repetition of the date, the body of the note, and the signature. One addressee, one date. Dated 26 January 1892, from Moscow, to Fyodor Alexandrovich Kumanin, editor-publisher of the Moscow journal "Artist."

Chekhov apologizes for the delay in answering – he has only just returned from his relief trip to famine-stricken Nizhny Novgorod province, and writing is physically difficult because his shoulder blades are chilled and sore. He then supplies the brief biographical note Kumanin has evidently requested on behalf of a correspondent named Praga: birth in Taganrog in 1860, schooling at the Taganrog gymnasium and then the medical faculty of Moscow University (graduated as a physician in 1884), the Pushkin Prize in 1888, and the 1890 trip to Sakhalin – which Chekhov wryly calls a "convict’s journey," playing on Sakhalin’s status as a penal-servitude (katorga) island. He notes he is unmarried and holds no state decorations. The letter closes with a domestic aside: he is confined to the house, bored and unable to write, and raises the approach of Shrovetide pancakes, proposing Testov’s tavern – a well-known Moscow eating house – as the place to eat them.