To L. S. Mizinova, 17 May 1891. Aleksin.

Written from Aleksin, on the Oka, where the Chekhovs were spending the summer of 1891, to Lidia (Lika) Stakhiyevna Mizinova: dateline, header date, a run of mock-tragic news items and comic invitations, and a closing NB from the household.

Chekhov opens with an epithet-stuffed apostrophe to Lika ("golden, mother-of-pearl, and lisle-stockinged"), then delivers the death of Mangus (a family dog) in deadpan mock-solemnity, followed by news of the household’s move to the upper floor of the Bylim-Kolosovsky house. The recurring register with Mizinova continues here: extravagant tenderness braided with extravagant violence, both equally performative. revives "Trofim," the running comic figure already established as Lika’s cursed prospective husband in (11 January 1891) – there Chekhov wishes him jaundice and a facial twitch; here, an eye put out with a fork at the Alhambra (a Moscow pleasure garden/restaurant of the period). The joke depends on continuity with that earlier letter and should be flagged for the same entity if Trofim has been pinned in the apparatus.

Chekhov signs himself "Hunyadi Janos" – the trade name of a popular Hungarian bitter mineral water, used here purely as a comic pseudonym, in the same vein as "The Well-Known Writer" elsewhere in this correspondence. The closing NB, in the collective household voice ("the caretaker’s wife bows to you... Masha asks"), is characteristic of Chekhov folding family members into his letters to Mizinova.