To A. S. Suvorin, 13 May 1891. Aleksin.

Written from the Aleksin dacha three days after his previous letter to Suvorin (10 May), a brisk, crowded letter of business and banter. Chekhov reports that a letter Suvorin had asked about was answered long ago, then vents at length about the editor Boris Glinsky and "Severny Vestnik" (the "Northern Herald"), suspecting Akim Flekser (the critic Akim Volynsky) and "the womenfolk" of pushing its editor Lyubov Gurevich into a hopeless venture. He promises Suvorin a Christmas story (or two), reports steady progress on both the Sakhalin book and his current writing despite toothache and stomach trouble, and gives instructions for printing his collected works – above all "Kashtanka," which he wants illustrated with a particular dog sketch from Suvorin’s desk. He sets up his summer forwarding address via Feodosia, and asks Suvorin to arrange for a Javanese horse – ordered in Singapore as a gift for Suvorin and shipped via Odessa – to be collected and sent on to Feodosia’s warm climate. He requests two legal texts (Tagantsev’s "Criminal Law" and the statutes on exiles and persons in custody) for the Sakhalin research, sketching the argument he means to make against life sentences and outdated exile law, and adds a scatter of small items: praise for Ignaty Potapenko’s latest piece, a question about a scandal involving Bibikov and an elderly lady, a cautious yes to Suvorin’s proposed tour of landowners, and – picking up the thread from his 8 March letter to Yelena Shavrova – a nudge that her story "At the Fortune-Teller’s" is sitting typeset and unprinted at "Novoye Vremya" while its author frets.