“Sept. 17th. 1865.
Niagara.
My dear Lucy,
I congratulate you with all my heart on the birth of your little son! I think by this time you will have forgotten all doubts and difficulties, and all but pleasant feelings of responsibility, in your great content, have you not? God very seldom sends us either duties or blessings without showing us how to fulfil and enjoy and use them, and I do not doubt but you will have found in your own case all sorts of new powers and instincts develop with the need of them, and will have by this time a pretty definite idea ‘What to do with a baby’—Is it not so?...
I wish there existed a visual telegraph (if such a phrase may be coined) and that I could give you a glimpse of the scene I have in front of me, and which is continually stealing my eyes from my paper. No less than Niagara in its full glory!—and what that glory is I don’t think any but eyes can tell. I have seen a good deal of beauty and grandeur in my life, in Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, etc., but I think never anything so wonderfully, bewitchingly, grandly beautifully[beautifully] as this. People talk of being disappointed in Niagara, but I think it can only be because, for the first moment, the enormous width of the Falls (900 feet in one case, 2000 in the other,—separated by an island) prevents their recognizing their height as well, or else they have not got the right natures to admire with! (and I think that last is oftener the case than people think).
It gives one most wonderfully the feeling of power and immensity,—the sort of feeling that was [expressed] long ago, ‘When I consider the work of Thy fingers, what is man that Thou are mindful of him?’—and yet the feeling of infinite beauty and harmony too. Before leaving we go under the Falls, and into the ‘Cave of the Winds’ behind a vast curtain of water, and that I think must give one almost more strongly still the impression of might and vastness. It is very little use to talk about it any more, I wish you could see it!
Thank you very much for writing to my Mother about A. I hope she will get away from her present uncomfortable place,—it would give me great pleasure if she came to you. Only I warn you I shall claim her some day!
Goodbye, dear child. With all good wishes for you and yours, I am ever
Yours very sincerely,
S. L. Jex-Blake.”