Full transcription:

Dear Mrs. Bryant:
            First, - all hail!
            Second, - my mother is better
Third, it seems good indeed to have to send a message to you because to do so is utterly
the way my thoughts often travel. As to my Mother. She is enough better to be “around the house” thoroughly. She takes a good rest every mid-day, has her breakfast by herself at any hour she happens up, and does bits of housework and quite a little sowing. *[alack the day! This act is the wrong gender!] She does not gain fast, not do her lefs! But even though members do increase in strength if not rapidly. She certainly had two fearful illnesses, + shows the trace thereof. For example, the Wrights gave us the very great pleasure of dropping in on us (even if they didn’t allow us the pleasuring of giving them any creature comfort). They came at Mama’s nap hour, and she just sagged with weariness though the deferred nap rested her satisfactorily. Now about Kappa Kappa Gamma. Things are going along more systematically now, I gather (Cecile has [been] kind enough to tell me a lot!) I trust so, if for no other reason than ease for you girls back of the youngsters. As to the question I am to answer by Forefather’s day I can as well be early and you can begin your tabulations with other early answerers like me. If I lived in Middlebury, or if I were ever likely to live near any chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma, I should ask for the privilege of joining with you, glorious company that you are. As both these conditions are contrary to fact, I have decided not to join what could never mean anything big to me. I am an Alpha Chi, in all matter of loyalty; I shall never, never lose any of you blessed girls if you join forty things I don’t. – I mean of all of who really are mine anyhow, not the new, late-born Alpha Chis. I’ve some questions I’m enclosing for you to treat as you well. Answer these yourself + no big bother, or talk them over with Mary Mellen + Bess Harrington at you leisure. I say, do as you please, to please me best. How are all three Bryants? I any case, I love them all [reliability.] Yours loyally, Mary J.N.

I know, as you all do, that no installation, agitation, initiation, or enactment could flat out, modify, nullify, or mollify the Alphachiness of the hearts of the old stagers like us. In that reliance, I abide; + we all walk together in a procession of the faithful as sure as the precession of the equinoxes,
Castleton, V.T.
Nov. 27, 1922