To A. S. Suvorin, 29 July 1891. Bogimovo.

A short, chatty letter of 29 July 1891 from Bogimovo, the Kaluga province estate where the Chekhov family was summering to Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of Novoye Vremya: dateline, a one-line repeated dateline, a report on money owed to the bookshop and progress against his debt to the newspaper, thanks for tobacco received, a demurral about visiting Crimea and a wry aside on household duty as "necessity," a one-line note on his father’s health, a jab at a schoolmaster named Vinogradov, a reflection on the turn to autumn and a boyhood memory of catching songbirds, a joke about his own books being absent from Suvorin’s shop, a closing interrupted by a patient’s arrival, and signature.

Chekhov reports a small windfall from his bookseller that will let him pay Suvorin most of what he owes, and jokes that he’s fighting his newspaper debt with a long story nearly finished. He thanks Suvorin for tobacco, then declines – for now – to travel to Crimea, citing domestic business at Bogimovo and professing to love only fishing for crucian carp and eating porridge outdoors among his household duties. A one-line report notes his father Pavel Yegorovich suffered a mild apoplectic fit at dinner. He then vents at a schoolmaster, Vinogradov, over some incident of officious "perspicacity" Suvorin had apparently written to him about, promising details in person. The weather turning after Elijah’s day (2 August O.S., a traditional Russian folk-calendar marker for the first chill of late summer) prompts a lyrical passage on his love of the Russian autumn and a nostalgic memory of selling caught songbirds at market as a boy. A joking remark that his own books are entirely absent from Suvorin’s shop closes the literary business, and the letter ends abruptly with a sick patient being brought to him by cart, regards to the Suvorin household, and signature.