Excuse this letter’s being like a hotch-potch. It’s incoherent, but I can’t help it. Sitting in an hotel room one can’t write better. Excuse its being long, It’s not my fault. My pen ran away with me--besides, I wanted to go on talking to you. It’s three o’clock in the night. My hand is tired. The wick of the candle wants snuffing, I can hardly see. Write to me at Sahalin every four or five days. It seems that the post goes there, not only by sea but across Siberia, so I shall get letters frequently. * * * * * All the Tomsk people tell me that there has not been a spring so cold and rainy as this one since 1842. Half Tomsk is under water. My luck! I am eating sweets. I shall have to stay at Tomsk till the rains are over. They say the road to Irkutsk is awful. TOMSK, May 20. It is Trinity Sunday with you, while with us even the willow has not yet come out, and there is still snow on the banks of the Tom. To-morrow I am starting for Irkutsk. I am rested. There is no need for hurry, as steam navigation on Lake Baikal does not begin till the 10th of June; but I shall go all the same. I am alive and well, my money is safe; I have a slight pain in my right eye. It aches. ... Everyone advises me to go back across America, as they say one may die of boredom in the Volunteer Fleet; it’s all military discipline and red tape regulations, and they don’t often touch at a port. To fill up my time I have been writing some impressions of my journey and sending them to _Novoye Vremya_; you will read them soon after the 10th of June. I write a little about everything, chit-chat. I don’t write for glory but from a financial point of view, and in consideration of the money I have had in advance. Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull too. * * * * * In two and a half days I shall be in Krasnoyarsk, and in seven or eight in Irkutsk. It’s fifteen hundred versts to Irkutsk. I have made myself coffee and am just going to drink it. ... After Tomsk the Taiga begins. We shall see it. My greeting to all the Lintvaryovs and to our old Maryushka. I beg mother not to worry and not to put faith in bad dreams. Have the radishes succeeded? There are none here at all. Keep well, don’t worry about money--there will be plenty; don’t try to spend less and spoil the summer for yourselves. TO A. S. SUVORIN. TOMSK, May 20, 1890. Greetings to you at last from Siberia, dear Alexey Sergeyevitch! I have missed you and our correspondence terribly.