To L. S. Mizinova, 21 January 1891. Petersburg.

Written from Petersburg on 21 January 1891 to Lidia (Lika) Stakhiyevna Mizinova, ten days after the previous letter in this run (11 January 1891, no. 880). Another short comic performance in the mock-formal register Chekhov keeps for her here – "most esteemed Lidia Stakhiyevna" – built on a running joke about a fifteen-kopeck gift of writing paper he had evidently promised her, pronounced fit for the "high society" of Isaac Levitan (the painter, a close friend of Chekhov’s), one Fedotov (unidentified beyond the name), and Moscow’s horse-tram conductors – the joke being the deliberately absurd mixture of the fashionable and the everyday. He signs himself "A. Kislota" ("A. Acid"), a comic pseudonym rather than a real name change. "Bucephalus" continues the running joke from the 11 January letter, there tied to a half-remembered name ("Bartsal, or Bucephalus"); here it stands alone as her acknowledged nickname for a third party. Bibikov’s remark about "a girl of astonishing beauty" seen at the Chekhovs’ place plays on Mizinova’s friendship with, and rivalry against, Chekhov’s sister Maria Pavlovna (Masha).