To A. M. Kondratyev, 22 February 1891. Moscow.

A warm, informal note to Alexei Mikhailovich Kondratyev, written from Moscow on 22 February 1891, a week after the brief formal note to a different man of the same surname (I. M. Kondratyev). Chekhov asks him to use his pull at the box office to secure two seats – stalls, row 7 or 8 – for Sunday morning’s performance of his own one-act farce "The Proposal," which Chekhov is otherwise unable to get tickets for. He closes with unrelated domestic chatter: a spring thaw threatens to flood the rivers and spoil a planned excursion to Babkino, the Kiselev family estate near Moscow where the Chekhovs often stayed, for vodka drunk from a silver cup; a letter has just arrived from Kiselev asking Chekhov to bring caviar.