To V. O. Mikhnevich, 17 January 1891. Petersburg.

Written from Petersburg on 17 January 1891, this is Chekhov’s first surviving letter addressed directly to Vladimir Osipovich Mikhnevich (1841-1899), the Petersburg journalist and chronicler of city life whom Chekhov had earlier named – unflatteringly, as "Mikhnevich the ass" – in a letter to Suvorin of December 1888, and glimpsed again, more benignly, wandering the theater corridors "like shades" in a letter of January 1889. Whatever the earlier private irritation, the tone here is brisk and cordial rather than pointed.

The note is a small comedy of mistaken headgear: word has reached Chekhov that his own sheepskin hat has ended up with Mikhnevich, evidently swapped by accident after both men left the actor Svobodin’s rooms – Chekhov, by his own account, a little later than Mikhnevich did. He returns Mikhnevich’s hat with the note, needles him gently for the mix-up (placing the blame for the three days his own hat sat unclaimed at the "Novoye Vremya" office squarely on Mikhnevich’s early departure), and closes with brief good wishes.