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My dear friend good bye.

LAURA BRIDGMAN.

In reply I wrote to her as follows: MY DEAR LITTLE LAURA

Mrs. Howe has a sweet little baby; -- it is a little girl; we shall call her Julia; she is very smooth, and soft, and nice; she does not cry much, and we love her very, very much. You love her too, I think, do you not? But you never felt of her, and she never kissed you, and how can you love her? It is not your hands, nor your body, nor your head, which loves her, and loves me, but your soul. If your hand were to be cut off, you would love me the same; so it is not the body which loves. Nobody knows what the soul is, but we know it is not the body, and cannot be hurt like the body; and when the body dies the soul cannot die. You ask me in your letter a great many thing about the soul, and about God; but, my dear little girl, it would take very much time, and very many sheets of paper to tell you all I think about it, and I am very busy with taking care of my dear wife; but I shall try to tell you a little, and you must wait until I come home, in June, and we will talk very much about all these things. You have been angry a few times, and you have known others to be angry, and you know what I mean by anger; you love me and many friends, and you know what I mean by love. When I say there is a spirit of love in the world, I mean that good people love each other; but you cannot feel the spirit of love with your fingers, it has no shape, nor body; it is not in one place more than in another, yet wherever there are good people there is a spirit of love. God is a spirit; the spirit of love. If you go into a house, and the children tell you that their father whips them, and will not feed them; if the house is cold, and dirty, and every body is sad and frightened, because the father is bad, and angry, and cruel, you will know that the father has no spirit of love. You never felt of him, you never had him strike you, you do not know what man he is, and yet you know he has not the spirit of love -- that is, he is not a good, kind father. If you go into another house, and the children are all warm, and well fed, and well taught, and are very happy, and every body tells you that the father did all this, and made them happy -- then you know he has the spirit of love; you never saw him, and yet you know certainly that he is good, and you may say that the spirit of love reigns in that house. Now, my dear child, I go all about in this great world, and I see it filled with beautiful things, and there are a great many millions of people, and there is food for them, and fire for them, and clothes for them, and they can be happy if they have a mind to be, and if they will love each other. All this world, and all these people, and all the animals, and all things, were made by God. He is not a man, nor like a man; I cannot see Him, nor feel Him, any more than you saw and felt the good father of that family; but I know that He has the spirit of love, because he too provided every thing to make all the people happy. God wants every body to he happy all the time, every day, Sundays and all, and to love one another; and if they love one another they will be happy; and when their bodies die, their souls will live on, and be happy, and then they will know more about God.

The good father of the family I spoke to you about, let his children do as they wished to do, because he loved to have them free; but he let them know that he wished them to love each other, and to do good; and if they obeyed his will they were happy; but if they did not love each other, or if they did any wrong, they were unhappy; and if one child did wrong it made the others unhappy too. So in the great world. God left men, and women, and children, to do as they wish, and let them know if they love one another, and do good, they will be happy; but if they do wrong, they will be unhappy, and make others unhappy likewise.

I will try to tell you why people have pain sometimes, and are sick, and die; but I cannot take so much time and paper now. But you must be sure that God loves you, and loves every body, and wants you and every body to be happy; and if you love every body, and do them all the good you can, and try to make them happy, you will he a very happy yourself; and will be much happier after your body dies than you are now.

Dear little Laura, -- I love you very much. I want you to be happy and good. I want you to know many things, but you must be patient and learn easy things first, and hard ones afterwards. When you were a little baby, you could not walk, and you learned first to creep on your hands and knees, and then to walk a little, and by and by you grew strong, and walked much. It would he wrong for a little child to want to walk very far before it was strong. Your mind is young and weak, and cannot understand hard things, but by and by it will be stronger, and you will be able to understand hard things; and I and my wife will help Miss Swift to show you all about things that now you do not know. Be patient, then, dear Laura; be obedient to your teacher, and to those older than you; love every body, and do not be afraid.