Friend Douglass,—Being recently a November visitant at the great wonder of our western hemisphere, I ventured to pencil some thoughts upon a theme, which, although the frequent subject of the painter and the poet, will forever remain exhaustless.

As I stood upon the shelving ledge, and saw the mighty volume, sheeted with foam, making its majestic plunge into the fearful abyss, I thought it not an inapt emblem of the vast flood of light which Truth is now pouring upon the world; some rays of which, I trust, your Star is about to disseminate.

Respectfully yours,

J. E. RobinsonRobinson, John E.

John E. Robinson (c. 1815-?) of Rochester, a clerk and bookkeeper. He seems to have been friends with the Post family and was an important figure in the Spiritualist movement in Rochester. 1850 U. S. Census, Rochester, Monroe, New York; Jenny Marsh Parker, Rochester A Story Historical (Rochester, N.Y.: Scranton, Wetmore, and Company, 1884), 268; Barbara Weisberg, Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 100, 116, 148; “About Amy and Isaac Post,” University of Rochester, rbscp.lib.rochester.edu. .

Rochester, November, 1847.