Wallingford, Conn.
July 20, 1900.
My dear Jennie,
I don't know Alice's address, so I am going to ask you to give her the enclosed card. I have been quite busy getting enough for the class ready to send and now in sending them, I was the only one at the Reunion who had a camera and this is the penalty.
We claim to be spending our vacation in Chicopee, but we took a little trip of ten days to Boston and now are here for two weeks, and vacation is going very rapidly. It has taken us nearly all the year to get settled in our little home, and we enjoy it very much.
We are here because Ida was wanted to keep house while her brother and his family take a trip to Block Island, and shall go back to Chicopee as soon as we can.
I got through the year in school, but I was a good deal draggled before it was over. I bid farewell to the Robinson Building with this year and am appointed principal of a new building two miles away, where I shall teach eight and ninth grades. i am sorry to have to go so far, but the additional pay makes me resigned. Besides I have always wanted these grades to teach. I have to walk perhaps a quarter of a mile to get a street car to go to my new school, or ride my bicycle. I shall try to do the latter all I can.
We went down to Boston on our wheels and enjoyed the trip very much. We went to visit Mrs. Patrick in whose house we have lived the greater part of the time we have been in Chicopee[.] We rode about in the suburbs quite a little. We went to the Blue Hills of Milton one day. On our way back to Chicopee we came through Sudbury and saw the Wayside Inn. We went out of the way to see Valetta Marean, one of the Class of '80 at Mt. Holyoke[.] She is very ill with Bright's Disease, and seemed very glad to see me. She will probably never be any better. She says it is only a question of time until she wears out.
Lettie Stimson came down to reunion in June and stayed with us. We both enjoyed the occasion very much. I was out of school one day.
I must close and get ready to do something else.
Write when you can. I hope you are all well this summer.
I am so sorry Alice had to lose her home.
With much love, Nettie.
[I believe the letter is written to Jennie Hedrick, Alice's sister.]
Inscription on the reverse: "Mt. Holyoke Class of '80. Reunion. June 1900."
[bought separately, but I believe the inscription is Nettie's handwriting and this is the photo she mentioned in the first paragraph of the letter]