I cannot put my real name on the book because it is too late: the design for the cover is ready and the book printed. [Footnote: “Motley Tales” is meant.] Many of my Petersburg friends advised me, even before you did, not to spoil the book by a pseudonym, but I did not listen to them, probably out of vanity. I dislike my book very much. It’s a hotch-potch, a disorderly medley of the poor stuff I wrote as a student, plucked by the censor and by the editors of comic papers. I am sure that many people will be disappointed when they read it. Had I known that I had readers and that you were watching me, I would not have published this book.
I rest all my hopes on the future. I am only twenty-six. Perhaps I shall succeed in doing something, though time flies fast.
Forgive my long letter and do not blame a man because, for the first time in his life, he has made bold to treat himself to the pleasure of writing to Grigorovitch.
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.