To N. M. Lintvareva, 5 March 1890. Moscow.

This is a letter to Natalya Mikhailovna Lintvareva – addressed throughout by her family nickname "Trosha" – one of the daughters of Aleksandra Vasilyevna Lintvareva, on whose Sumy-district estate (Luka, on the Psyol river) the Chekhov family had summered since 1888. It was written a bare month before Chekhov’s departure across Siberia for the Sakhalin penal colony (he left Moscow on 21 April 1890), and the letter’s news of that plan – still six weeks off – is its real occasion.

Content: Chekhov opens with a small mock-confession of financial wrongdoing – he had placed a classified notice for the Lintvarevs’ mill in the newspaper "Novoye Vremya," charged Aleksandra Vasilyevna the going commercial rate of 60 kopecks a line (six rubles for ten lines), then discovered from the paper’s own account that he had in fact been billed only 1 ruble 80 kopecks, presumably a contributor’s discount extended to him as a "Novoye Vremya" regular. He reckons the overcharge at 4 rubles 20 kopecks and jokingly declares it a debt to the family. He then asks after Trosha’s health (a persistent cough, noted secondhand via "Countess Lida") and needles her about still bathing in the Psyol. The letter’s center of gravity is the announcement of the Sakhalin trip: departure in April, return expected in December, route out via Siberia (some 11,000 versts) and back by sea. He explicitly denies that anyone "commissioned" him to go – the trip and its considerable expense are his own initiative – and jokes grimly about the real hazards (bears, escaped convicts) with the gallows-humor request not to be remembered unkindly if either kills him. He promises to send the resulting book (what became "Ostrov Sakhalin") the moment it appears, warning in advance that it will be dry and statistics-heavy. He closes with greetings to two more Lintvareva sisters who practiced as doctors, and a formal bow to Aleksandra Vasilyevna.