Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO F. D. BATYUSHKOV.

NICE, December 15, 1897.

... In one of your letters you expressed a desire that I should send you an international story, taking for my subject something from the life here. Such a story I can write only in Russia from reminiscences. I can only write from reminiscences, and I have never written directly from Nature. I have let my memory sift the subject, so that only what is important or typical is left in it as in a filter....