To A. S. Suvorin, 18 August 1891. Bogimovo.

A second letter of 18 August 1891 from Bogimovo to Chekhov’s publisher and close correspondent Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin: the opening line states explicitly that Chekhov had already sent Suvorin one letter that day along with his story, and is now writing "another, in answer to yours, just received" – i.e. a reply to a letter from Suvorin that arrived after the first was posted. Contents: dateline, short-form date, a defense of doctors against Suvorin’s charge that medical care is given without love or self-sacrifice, a conditional concession on a maxim about beatings and the lash, a wistful aside about piquet on the sand at Feodosia, a note on his brother’s medal and new Moscow post, a nighttime reflection on the exhausting composition of his just-finished story, a verdict on a story by Yezhov, a report of a scandal involving General Kononovich, news of the "astronomer-lady" now in Batum, closing regards, an anecdote about an injured peasant woman, travel plans, a valediction, and the signature.

Chekhov takes up Suvorin’s complaint – relayed via Suvorin’s own household nanny’s folk diagnosis, "the gut has burst" – that attendants on the sick (apparently occasioned by the household dog Nikolai’s illness) act without love or self-sacrifice, and defends doctors: even the most devoted physician is helpless before certain conditions, and the humiliation of standing by uselessly while a household exhausts itself in "every measure" is a private, recurring vileness particular to the medical trade, deserving of forgiveness. He half-concedes Suvorin’s harsher maxim about beatings and deserved lashes, provided Suvorin can first show the person in question has actually known happiness rather than already being ground down by fate. A brief, wistful note wonders whether Aleksei Alekseyevich Suvorin (Suvorin’s son, family circle) is at Feodosia and imagines a game of piquet on the beach. He reports his brother the schoolmaster – Ivan Pavlovich Chekhov, a teacher by profession – has received a medal and a post in Moscow, praising his stubborn, effective character. Chekhov then reflects, in a nighttime aside, on the difficulty of finishing the story he has just sent Suvorin (the same story discussed in), self-deprecatingly comparing his rushed, tangled composition to work done by "a rusted wire" rather than a brain, and asks that printing be held until autumn so he can correct proofs. He turns to literary business: a story by Nikolai Mikhailovich Yezhov, "The Torture," judged crude and unpolished but engaging, with its author making visible progress – then relays gossip that General Kononovich, the Sakhalin penal administrator Chekhov had met the previous year, has been summoned to Petersburg over a 400,000-ruble shortfall. News follows of Olga Kundasova, Chekhov’s recurring "astronomka" acquaintance, now in Batum and planning to forward her address once Chekhov confirms his own travel there; he praises her sharpened intelligence and describes a debate he witnessed between her and the zoologist Wagner, in which she outmatched him, tempered by a coarse aside about her lack of practical direction. The letter closes with regards to Suvorin’s household (Anna Ivanovna, Nastya, Borya, and Aleksei Alekseyevich), an anecdote about a peasant woman thrown from a cart and gravely injured who nonetheless frets over her neighbor’s threshing rather than her own survival, travel plans for 5 September, a valediction, and the signature.