town in the Moscow province. Living was cheap there, so the other members
of the family spent the summer there; they were joined by Anton when he had
taken his degree, and the Chekhovs soon had a large circle of friends in
the neighbourhood. Every day the company met, went long walks, played
croquet, discussed politics, read aloud, and went into raptures over
Shtchedrin. Here Chekhov gained an insight into military society which he
afterwards turned to account in his play "The Three Sisters."

One day a young doctor called Uspensky came in from Zvenigorod, a small
town fourteen miles away. "Look here," he said to Chekhov, "I am going away
for a holiday and can't find anyone to take my place.... You take the job
on. My Pelageya will cook for you, and there is a guitar there...."

Voskresensk and Zvenigorod played an important part in Chekhov's life as a
writer; a whole series of his tales is founded on his experiences there,
besides which it was his first introduction to the society of literary and
artistic people. Three or four miles from Voskresensk was the estate of a
landowner, A. S. Kiselyov, whose wife was the daughter of Begitchev, the
director of the Moscow Imperial Theatre. The Chekhovs made the acquaintance
of the Kiselyovs, and spent three summers in succession on their estate,
Babkino.

The Kiselyovs were musical and cultivated people, and intimate friends of
Dargomyzhsky, Tchaykovsky the composer, and the Italian actor Salvini.
Madame Kiselyov was passionately fond of fishing, and would spend hours at
a time sitting on the river bank with Anton, fishing and talking about
literature. She was herself a writer. Chekhov was always playing with the
Kiselyov children and running about the old park with them. The people he
met, the huntsman, the gardener, the carpenters, the sick women who came to
him for treatment, and the place itself, river, forests, nightingales--all