Painting. The house was sold by auction, one of the creditors took all the
furniture, and Chekhov's mother was left with nothing. Some months
afterwards she went to rejoin her husband in Moscow, taking the younger
children with her, while Anton, who was then sixteen, lived on in solitude
at Taganrog for three whole years, earning his own living, and paying for
his education at the high school.

He lived in the house that had been his father's, in the family of one
Selivanov, the creditor who had bought it, and gave lessons to the latter's
nephew, a Cossack. He went with his pupil to the latter's house in the
country, and learned to ride and shoot. During the last two years he was
very fond of the society of the high-school girls, and used to tell his
brothers that he had had the most delightful flirtations.

At the same time he went frequently to the theatre and was very fond of
French melodramas, so that he was by no means crushed by his early struggle
for existence. In 1879 he went to Moscow to enter the University, bringing
with him two school-fellows who boarded with his family. He found his
father had just succeeded in getting work away from home, so that from the
first day of his arrival he found himself head of the family, every member
of which had to work for their common livelihood. Even little Mihail used
to copy out lectures for students, and so made a little money. It was the
absolute necessity of earning money to pay for his fees at the University
and to help in supporting the household that forced Anton to write. That
winter he wrote his first published story, "A Letter to a Learned
Neighbour." All the members of the family were closely bound together round
one common centre--Anton. "What will Anton say?" was always their uppermost
thought on every occasion.

Ivan soon became the master of the parish school at Voskresensk, a little