Send me your photograph, if possible. I am so overwhelmed with your kindness that I feel as though I should like to write a whole ream to you. God grant you health and happiness, and believe in the sincerity of your deeply respectful and grateful A. CHEKHOV. TO N. A. LEIKIN. MOSCOW, April 6, 1886. ... I am ill. Spitting of blood and weakness. I am not writing anything.... If I don’t sit down to write to-morrow, you must forgive me--I shall not send you a story for the Easter number. I ought to go to the South but I have no money.... I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues. I am inclined to think it is not so much my lungs as my throat that is at fault.... I have no fever. TO MADAME M. V. KISELYOV. BABKINO, June, 1886. LOVE UNRIPPLED [Footnote: Parody of a feminine novel.] (A NOVEL) Part I. It was noon.... The setting sun with its crimson, fiery rays gilded the tops of pines, oaks, and fir-trees.... It was still; only in the air the birds were singing, and in the distance a hungry wolf howled mournfully.... The driver turned round and said: “More snow has fallen, sir.” “What?” “I say, more snow has fallen.” “Ah!” Vladimir Sergeitch Tabatchin, who is the hero of our story, looked for the last time at the sun and expired. * * * * * A week passed.... Birds and corncrakes hovered, whistling, over a newly-made grave. The sun was shining. A young widow, bathed in tears, was standing by, and in her grief sopping her whole handkerchief.... MOSCOW, September 21, 1886. ... It is not much fun to be a great writer. To begin with, it’s a dreary life. Work from morning till night and not much to show for it. Money is as scarce as cats’ tears. I don’t know how it is with Zola and Shtchedrin, but in my flat it is cold and smoky.... They give me cigarettes, as before, on holidays only. Impossible cigarettes! Hard, damp, sausage-like. Before I begin to smoke I light the lamp, dry the cigarette over it, and only then I begin on it; the lamp smokes, the cigarette splutters and turns brown, I burn my fingers ... it is enough to make one shoot oneself! ... I am more or less ill, and am gradually turning into a dried dragon-fly. ... I go about as festive as though it were my birthday, but to judge from the critical glances of the lady cashier at the _Budilnik_, I am not dressed in the height of fashion, and my clothes are not brand-new. I go in buses, not in cabs. But being a writer has its good points. In the first place, my book, I hear, is going rather well; secondly, in October I shall have money; thirdly, I am beginning to reap laurels: at the refreshment bars people point at me with their fingers, they pay me little attentions and treat me to sandwiches. Korsh caught me in his theatre and straight away presented me with a free pass.... My medical colleagues sigh when they meet me, begin to talk of literature and assure me that they are sick of medicine. And so on....