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Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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<strong>Letters</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Anton</strong> <strong>Chekhov</strong> to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchMay 28, 1892.Life is short, and <strong>Chekhov</strong>, from whom you are expecting an answer,would like it to flash by brilliantly and with dash. He wouldgo to Prince’s Island, to Constantinople, and again to India andSahalin …. But in the first place he is not free, he has a respectablefamily who need his protection. In the second, he has a large dose <strong>of</strong>cowardice. Looking towards the future I call nothing but cowardice.I am afraid <strong>of</strong> getting into a muddle, and every journey complicatesmy financial position. No, don’t tempt me without need. Don’twrite to me <strong>of</strong> the sea.It is hot here. There are warm rains, the evenings are enchanting.Three-quarters <strong>of</strong> a mile from here there is a good bathing placeand good sport for picnics, but no time to bathe or go to picnics.Either I am writing and gnashing my teeth, or settling questions <strong>of</strong>halfpence with carpenters and labourers. Misha was cruelly reprimandedby his superiors for coming to me every week instead <strong>of</strong>staying at home, and now there is no one but me to look after thefarming, in which I have no faith, as it is on a petty scale, and morelike a gentlemanly hobby than real work. I have bought three mousetraps,and catch twenty-five mice a day and carry them away to thecopse. It is lovely in the copse ….Our starlings, old and young, suddenly flew away. This puzzledus, for it won’t be time for their migration for ever so long; butsuddenly we learn that the other day clouds <strong>of</strong> grasshoppers fromthe south, which were taken for locusts, flew over Moscow. Onewonders how did our starlings find out that on precisely such a dayand so many miles from Melihovo these insects would fly past? Whotold them about it? Truly this is a great mystery ….304

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