To M. P. Chekhov, 23 April 1890. Volga, parokhod "Perm--Nizhny".

Dating and addressee. Written 23 April 1890 aboard the steamer "Perm–Nizhny" on the Volga, during the first days of Chekhov’s overland and river journey east to Sakhalin Island (he departed Moscow 21 April 1890). Addressed to his younger brother Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov, who remained in Moscow; the envelope on the reverse gives the family’s Moscow address (Kudrinskaya Sadovaya, Korneyev’s house). it opens directly into travel chat, closes with a nickname-signature ("Ex-Shpak") consistent with Chekhov’s other family correspondence, and carries a full envelope/address block – none of the diagnostic telegram markers (bare surname-only signature, missing salutation/closing, wire-terse compression) are present. The text is short but that reflects Chekhov’s own epistolary economy with family, not telegraphic form.

A brief, breezy note from early in the Sakhalin journey. Chekhov reports having read a story called "The Violin" and asks Mikhail to pass along advice to its authoress: her chosen pseudonym "Yevg." is a bad choice because readers will mistake her work for that of Yevgeny Lvov, an established writer of stories under a similar name. He asks that Suvorin be notified once the family leaves for Sumy (the Chekhovs’ usual summer destination in Ukraine). He describes travel practicalities – sailing with the Kamensky brothers’ steamship line, eating caviar out of boredom, sitting alone in his cabin ("Solo," given in Latin script in the original as an affected flourish) – and offers a weather observation (fine as far as Nizhny Novgorod, colder past it). He reports good health and firm spirits, sends regards to everyone, and admits mixed feelings: he doesn’t want to go home, but wishes the whole "Shpak" circle (a family in-joke nickname group. his own sign-off "Ex-Shpak") were traveling with him. He signs off with a phonetic Cyrillic rendering of French "au revoir" (russianАревуар) – an affectation/joke, preserved in translation as "Arevoir" rather than normalized to standard French, since the source deliberately spells it as a Russianized transliteration rather than using the French word itself.