Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

MELIHOVO, April 15, 1894.

... I have come back from the flaming Tavrida and am already sitting on the cool banks of my pond. It’s very warm, however: the thermometer runs up to twenty-six....

I am busy looking after the land: I am making new avenues, planting flowers, chopping down dead trees, and chasing the hens and the dogs out of the garden. Literature plays the part of Erakit, who was always in the background. I don’t want to write, and indeed, it’s hard to combine a desire to live and a desire to write....