To A. A. Kiseleva, 8 January 1890. Petersburg.

The letter is a single continuous comic set-piece: an official-sounding congratulatory address that curdles, item by item, into a mock-inventory of absurd "gifts" (scissors for cutting the tails off mice and sparrows; a pen for bad verses and a pen for good ones; a frame for an unspecified "mug" of a portrait; an ancient history book proving fools and scoundrels are nothing new) before pivoting, in the same mock-official register, to a request for money – ending with the suggestion that the addressee simply steal it from her father if she has none. It closes with an equally mock-solemn epistolary sign-off and a one-line postscript apologizing for "careless" handwriting, blamed on "agitation" – itself part of the joke, since the whole piece is a controlled comic performance, not an agitated one.

Register note for translators/reviewers: the source text capitalizes common nouns and pronouns irregularly and profusely (Государыня, Многих, Добром, Душа, Ножницы, Рамку, Историю, Мне, Вас, etc.) – this is not a transcription artifact but the letter’s central comic device, a parody of the exaggerated deference and self-important orthography of formal petitions and official correspondence. The translation preserves this pattern of unpredictable capitalization throughout (You/Your, Name-day, Health, Soul, Mug, Note-paper, Illustrations, Scoundrels, etc.) rather than normalizing it, since flattening the capitals would erase the joke.