Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO L. S. MIZINOV.

YALTA, January 29, 1900.

DEAR LIRA,

They have written to me that you have grown very fat and become dignified, and I did not expect that you would remember me and write to me. But you have remembered me—and thank you very much for it, dear. You write nothing about your health: evidently it’s not bad, and I am glad. I hope your mother is well and that everything is going on all right. I am nearly well; I am ill from time to time, but not often, and only because I am old—the bacilli have nothing to do with it. And when I see a lovely woman now I smile in an aged way, and drop my lower lip—that’s all.