To S. P. Kuvshinnikova, 23 April 1890. Volga, parokhod "Aleksandr Nevsky".

it has a full closing ("Yours, A. Chekhov"), first-person narrative sentences, and a complete address panel copied from the reverse of the item – none of the elliptical, preposition-dropping telegraphic grammar seen in genuine wires elsewhere in this corpus (compare, a true telegram). dateline, body, signature, and the "on the reverse" address block are all parts of the same mailed item, not concatenated archival fragments.

Written on the second day of Chekhov’s journey east to Sakhalin Island, begun 21 April 1890. He is aboard the Volga steamer Alexander Nevsky, heading downriver before the long overland leg through Siberia. The addressee, Sofia Petrovna Kuvshinnikova, was a painter and, with her husband the police physician Dmitri Pavlovich Kuvshinnikov, host of a Moscow artistic salon Chekhov frequented; she is widely identified as a model for the heroine of his story "Popryguniya" ("The Grasshopper"), published the following year, though that identification is not at issue in this letter.

Content: a spare travel-diary note. Chekhov reports passing Plyos on the Volga – recognizing its cemetery church and a red-roofed house from an earlier trip – and hearing an accordion played mournfully on the bank; notes the cold and lingering patches of snow; describes shipboard life (dull in the cabin, better on deck if not for the cold); and mentions eating caviar alone, without vodka for lack of company, while saving a bottle of cognac to open only on reaching the Pacific coast – a small joke about the scale of the journey ahead, since Sakhalin was still weeks away by river, rail, and horse-drawn tarantass.