To L. S. Mizinova, 12 June 1891. Bogimovo.

Written from Bogimovo to Lidia (Lika) Stakhiyevna Mizinova, three weeks after: dateline, header date, and a run of short comic paragraphs (reproach, garden description, travel directions, closing banter, signature, postscript news, and a reply to a letter just received), all addressed to the same correspondent throughout.

This is Chekhov in his fully performative register with Mizinova – teasing, hyperbolic, mock-aggrieved that she has not yet come to Bogimovo as promised, and jealously ribbing her over the painter Isaak Levitan (called here "that Circassian," a joking reference to Levitan’s dark, striking looks, not a literal ethnic claim). He catalogues the estate’s charms (garden, river, mill, nightingales), gives literal travel directions (the driver Gushchin at the station, or the halt four versts off with a horse – "Pegasus" – to be sent for her), and closes with a run of family and household notices: the family’s returned pet mongoose, his sister Masha’s health, and a mock-scandalized quotation of the racy expressions in Lika’s own just-received letter, which he blames on the coachman "Trophim’s" influence. The final paragraphs turn briefly serious – an oblique, characteristically underplayed reference to his own poor health ("wet and dry rattles" in his chest) delivered in the same light tone as everything around it, in keeping with Chekhov’s habit of never naming the gravity of a thing outright.