He has been unmanly enough to strike me more than once. I hardly ever see him in the evenings; he leaves me to do as I can with the children, and to slave away at my needle, while he goes to enjoy himself at the public-house. There never was a woman worse treated. I don't deserve it; it's too bad; I have done my best, but it's of no use; I am very miserable, but "I can't help it." Now, my good woman, don't cry;-but just think whether you really have done your best to make your husband a good husband; whether, for instance, in that matter of his dinner or his supper, you have done your very best to please him, and whether, if he has sometimes been a bit cross, you have not paid him back in his own coin by being cross too. If husband and wife both take the sulks and don't speak to each other for a week, only snarl at each other like cat and dog, it is all nonsense for them to say they "can't help it."

And so indeed with many other miseries, both at home and abroad; things of which we say that we "can't help" them. The fact is, we may help them if we will. And where, by reason of our moral weakness, it may be only too true that, of ourselves, we "can't help" doing things that are wrong, let us remember that we need not be left altogether to ourselves. I, at all events, believe most firmly in this--that Almighty God is ever willing, as He is ever able, by His providence around us and by His grace within us, to help us in every good purpose and every good work, in every struggle with temptation and passion, in every conflict with difficulty and with sorrow; so that, even when it is true that "I can't help it," I won't despair. I know of One who can; and I will ask Him to do that for me which is more than I can do for myself.

GEORGE PHILIP AND SON, PRINTERS, LIVERPOOL.

"I DON'T CARE."

"I don't care may mean something very wise or something very foolish, something very good or something very bad, something very noble or something very base. The best men in the world, in common with the worst, have often said "I don't care," and have acted accordingly; and I am not sure but that "I don't care" has done quite as much good as harm. So let us not hastily condemn it as a saying, or a maxim, or an expression of a state of mind to be at all times carefully avoided; let us rather study to know when it is well and when it is not well to say "I don't care ;" and I believe it will turn out, upon inquiry, that, if we mean and wish to be and to do what we ought to be and to do, “I don't care will, quite as often as I do care," have to be our motto.

In this lecture, then, I am going to say a word for "I don't care." I am going to teach you to say "I don't care ;" I am going to point out the duty of saying "I don't care," the courage, the dignity, the nobleness of saying "I don't care." Yet you need not be afraid of my encouraging the recklessness, the rashness, and the many other bad things that often lurk under the saying "I don't care." The object of this address is twofold-it is to point out when to say and when not to say "I don't care."

Let us take the good side of this saying first. It is well for us, it is well for all the world, that some men, that a great many men have said, with reference to some things, "I don't care."

"I don't care" has had a great deal to do with giving us our soldiers and our sailors; and although it would have been a great deal better for the world if it had always lived in peace, so as to require no man to be a soldier, we should be very badly off without sailors. But "I don't care" is the principle upon which most lads go to sea. "I don't care" for the difficulties and the dangers of a sea-faring life. There is equi

noctial heat and there is arctic cold; there are tedious calms and furious storms; there are sickly climates in which an Englishman can hardly live; and, sometimes, on board ship, the provisions run short and become bad, and the poor fellows are almost starved; and all the comforts of home have to be surrendered, and most of the pleasures of a landsman's life have to be given up all the time the sailor is at sea. Is it not well, then, that some fellows are so constituted that they "don't care" for these things? If we all cared for them, cared for them so much as to shun the seaman's life, the commerce of the world would be brought to a stand-still. "I don't care is the motto and must be the motto of all great travellers and explorers. "I don't care for difficulty, "I don't care" for fatigue, “I don't care" for exposure to the extremes of heat and cold, "I don't care for danger in any shape, and "I don't care" for death. Only think what a large place "I don't care must have in the mind of a man like Dr. Livingstone. In fact, ever since those bold Phoenicians and Carthaginians of ancient times ventured to pass the Straits of Gibraltar and to sail into the Atlantic Ocean, "I don't care" has had a great deal to do with those geographical discoveries that have made known to us so much concerning the face of the globe, and the people and other creatures that dwell upon it. Moreover, “I don't care" mans the life-boat, and sends her out in the raging storm to save the lives of shipwrecked men; and "I don't

care" animates the fire brigade, as its members risk their lives to rescue others from the devouring flames; and "I don't care sends scores of brave fellows down into the suffocating coal-pit, to search for and to recover, whether living or dead, their poor comrades whom an explosion has overtaken; and, if it were not for "I don't care," we should find it rather hard to obtain men to drive the Irish Express and the Limited Mail, on dark and foggy nights, at the rate of forty miles an hour. So let us not condemn "I don't care " in an unqualified manner; let us honour it, admire it, be thankful for it, in so far as it is the expression of that courage, of that readiness to forego much comfort, of that indifference to danger, which are such grand and precious properties of the human mind, and to which we all owe so much.

"I don't care" is also a very good principle as seen in the behaviour and felt in the experience of the man who is easily pleased and more easily satisfied, whose tastes are simple, who makes his wants as few as possible, who can do with water if he can't have wine, who can put up with cold meat when he can't have hot, and with very humble fare when his means won't allow him better. Some people invent for themselves so many wants as to make themselves very miserable whenever those wants cannot be supplied. Such creatures are not fit to "rough it" in the world. Tender, finicky, namby-pamby, “Miss Nancy" sort of fellows, who are wretched unless supplied with every comfort and almost every luxury that can be obtained. Well now, I think that the "I don't care" which expresses a power and a readiness to "rough it," if "roughing it" be necessary, is a great deal better, a great deal more manly, than that extreme particularity in regard to all manner of little things. At all events, it is a great matter for a man to have a stomach that says "I don't care" though the food you put into

care

me be very coarse, and not cooked exactly to a turn; and a great matter for a man to have a chest that says "I don't what the weather is or which way the wind blows, and if I can't get country air, I can manage to get on very well with such as I find in town. Of course a man may be so constituted that he must care about such things; so constituted that "I don't care," applied to such things, would be illness and death; but it is possible also for a man, by over carefulness, to bring himself to this condition of inability to endure anything that involves hardship. "I don't care," in so far as it is the sign of a robust constitution and of a manly independence of those artificial wants which men, too intent upon enjoyment, manufacture to their great discomfort,-in so far, I say, “I don't care” is wise and good, and indicates a state of mind which it would be well for us all to cultivate.

It

So far for the virtue and the value of "I don't care" in regard to things physical. Now I shall try to show you of what use it is in some other and more important matters. is well to be able to say "I don't care in regard to what other people may think and talk concerning you.' I do not say that it is well to be altogether indifferent to the opinions that our neighbours may form of us. I do not say that it is well to set Society, or so much of Society as knows anything about us, at defiance. There may be a great deal of conceit, and of contemptible conceit, in those eccentricities of dress and of behaviour which make a man singular, and cause people to talk about him. It is not "I don't care," but "I do care" that is at the root of that singularity. Nevertheless, we are, most of us, far too much the slaves of what may be thought and said about us. And it is a very costly slavery. It costs some people a great deal in dress, in furniture, in the entertainments they provide for their friends. They cannot bear to think of the