provided Chekhov with subjects to write about and put him in the mood for
writing. He always got up early and began writing by seven o'clock in the
morning. After lunch the whole party set off to look for mushrooms in the
woods. Anton was fond of looking for mushrooms, and said it stimulated the
imagination. At this time he was always talking nonsense.

Levitan, the painter, lived in the neighbourhood, and Chekhov and he
dressed up, blacked their faces and put on turbans. Levitan then rode off
on a donkey through the fields, where Anton suddenly sprang out of the
bushes with a gun and began firing blank cartridges at him.

In 1886 Chekhov suffered for the second time from an attack of spitting
blood. There is no doubt that consumption was developing, but apparently he
refused to believe this himself. He went on being as gay as ever, though he
slept badly and often had terrible dreams. It was one of these dreams that
suggested the subject of his story "The Black Monk."

That year he began to write for the _Novoye Vremya_, which made a special
feature of his work. Under the influence of letters from Grigorovitch, who
was the first person to appreciate his talent, Chekhov began to take his
writing more seriously.

In 1887 he visited the south of Russia and stayed at the Holy Mountains,
which gave him the subjects of two of his stories, "Easter Eve" and
"Uprooted." In the autumn of that year he was asked by Korsh, a theatrical
manager who knew him as a humorous writer, to write something for his
theatre. Chekhov sat down and wrote "Ivanov" in a fortnight, sending off
every act for rehearsal as it was completed.

By this time he had won a certain amount of recognition, everyone was