The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, bu how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing.

"It's nice to be a lord" he joked to his friend Ivan Leontyev (who wrote humorous pieces under the pseudonym Shcheglov) but he took his responsibilities as a landlord seriously and soon made himself useful to the local peasants. As well as organising relief for victims of the famine and cholera outbreaks of 1892 he went on to build three schools a fire station and a clinic and to donate his medical services to peasants for miles around despite frequent recurrences of his tuberculosis. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend perhaps Chekhov's closest.

His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. "
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896 but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.