To the Chekhovs, 7 September 1890. Sakhalin.

Another telegram, even shorter than its neighbors: two words of text – he is well, he will be home soon – wired from Sakhalin on 7 September 1890, three weeks before Chekhov finally left the island. By early September the census that had occupied him since mid-July was essentially finished, and the promise of a homecoming is the one piece of information this wire adds to the family’s running account of him; everything else is the same reassurance-formula sent all summer. The form itself, reproduced along with the wired text (the printed blank of the imperial telegraph office, with its fixed slots for destination and addressee), gives the recipient only by surname in the dative – Sumy, to Chekhova – the Lintvaryov estate near Sumy where the family was staying, the same address as the telegram of 14 August. The catalog title groups the wire under "To the Chekhovs" (the family collectively), but the form’s addressee line names a single woman, most likely his mother Yevgenia Yakovlevna or his sister Maria Pavlovna, either of whom the household would have expected to receive and relay word of him.