Mr. North

“ “It was in the north, sir, as we came down,” observed Richard.
“My dear Rick,” said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, “I’ll take an oath it’s either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in the east.” ”

“ He would have then gonne to the king of France (Lewis XIII) , but his owne men brought him back.
[405] Capt. North—quaere if of Oxon [406] : I thinke of University College.
Thomas North (1535-1601) .
[407] Mr. Thomas North, that translated Plutarch's Lives (my lord chief justice [408] tells me) was great-uncle to his grandfather.
Richard Norwood (1590?-1675) .
[409] Mr. Richard Norwood:—where he was born I cannot yet learn.
Norwood is an ancient family: about 300 yeares since St. Low maried with a daughter and heire of them and quarters the coate in the margent [410] . ”

“ But as late as February, 1865, a new exemption law was reported to the Confederate Congress, and on the eve of being passed, containing this clause: "All ministers of religion, who have, at any time during the war, bought and sold for profit, shall go into the army." This law was reported to Congress by Mr. Miles, of South Carolina, Chairman of the Military Committee. ”

“ North's health began to break down soon after he became master of Trinity, and for the last four years of his life his condition became more and more deplorable. Mind and body gave way together, and after suffering from paralysis and epileptic fits, which obscured and enfeebled his intellect, he succumbed at last to apoplexy at Cambridge in April 1683, and was buried in the college chapel, where a small tablet with his initials, ‘J. N.,’ serves as his only monument. There can be no doubt that North read himself to death, and overtaxed powers which appear to have been of a high order. ”

“ The tree that I planted on the grave-mound of my father—can it be that it lives now? Why do I linger in distant waves, taking tribute and conquering in war? My soul despises the glittering gold, and enough have I of renown.
"There's a flag on the mast and it points to the north, in
the north is the land I hold dear;
I will follow the course of the heavenly winds, and back
to the Northland I'll steer."
To his foster-brother Frithiof said: "Bjorn, I am weary of riding the sea. My heart longs for the firm earth of the Northland, and her lofty mountains are calling to me. ”

“ Already Ned had begun to readjust some of his ideas in regard to the North. It was no longer easy to believe that his father had exaggerated its beauty and its appeal, its desolation and its vastness. It was a strange thing for a man used to cities to go day upon day without seeing scarcely a village beside the sea, a single human being other than those of his own party. Here was one place, it seemed, that the hand of man had touched but lightly if at all. ”

“ The North is a numbed and haggard land of and snow, say many voices. In its vast voids lives a dark spirit which lures men on and tricks them so that they come, in time, to love that which punishes them. And if by some fair hap they are led into other and softer climes, then do they fret and fever for the wolf-lands of the Yukon or the Mackenzie, as though some secret and unforbidden magic had entered their blood forever. ”

“ It has been said that well-directed labor toward a given end is an excellent kind of prayer for its attainment. If that be so, then prayer has been my portion for many years. Through all the seasons of disappointment and defeat I had never ceased to believe that the great white mystery of the North must eventually succumb to the insistence of human experience and will, and, standing there with my back to the world and my face toward that mystery, I believed that I should win in spite of all the powers of darkness and of desolation. ”

“ Who that knows the North can ever deny its lure? Wherever you be, it will call and call to you. In the sluggish South you will hear it, will long for the keen tingle of its silver days, the vaster glory of its star-strewn nights. In the city's heart it will come to you till you hunger for its big, clean spaces, its racing rivers, its purple tundras. In the homes of the rich its voice will seek you out, and you will ache for your lonely camp-fire, a sunset splendouring to golden death, the night where the silence clutches and the heavens vomit forth white fire. ”

“ These silent, patient, toiling ones were the Conquerors of the Great White Land; the Men of the High North, the Brotherhood of the Arctic Wild. No saga will ever glorify their deeds, no epic make them immortal. Their names will be written in the snows that melt and vanish at the smile of Spring; but in their works will they live, and their indomitable spirit will be as a beacon-light, shining down the dim corridors of Eternity.
I slept at a bunkhouse that night, and next morning I again made a call at the tent within which lay Berna. ”

“ Our Tent is about as big as a fir-cone—and Christopher North an insect!
What a wild world of clouds all over that vast central wilderness of Northern Argyllshire lying between Cruachan and Melnatorran—Corryfinuarach and Ben Slarive, a prodigious land! defying description, and in memory resembling not realities, but like fragments of tremendous dreams. Is it a sterile region? Very. In places nothing but stones. Not a blade of grass—not a bent of heather—not even moss. And so they go shouldering up into the sky—enormous masses—huger than churches or ships. ”

“ North expressed a strong desire to spend the remainder of his ‘life and fortunes’ on the plantation in Guiana; but whether he ever again, for any cause, put to sea does not appear. In July 1636 Sir John North wrote that he wished his brother Roger could be captain of one of the king's ships, and in November 1637 sent him a message from court that the king desired the formation of a new company, but ‘there is a way to be thought upon first.’
During this time of suspense Roger was much at Kirtling, the home of Dudley, third baron North, and the constant resort of his brothers. ”

“ Every day he had learned more of those savage natural forces that find clearest expression in the North. He knew the wind and the cold, snow-slide and blizzard, but also he knew hunger and fear and travail and pain. All these things taught him what they had to teach, and all of them served to shape him into the man he had grown to be. And one still, clear afternoon the North sent home a new realization of its power.
He was working that part of the line from his Twelve-Mile cabin over the ridge toward the Forks cabin,—his old rendezvous with Bess. ”

“ Crash of a bull moose to rouse you from dreaming;
Forest your couch, and your candle a star.
You who this faint day the High North is luring
Unto her vastness, taintlessly sweet;
You who are steel-braced, straight-lipped, enduring,
Dreadless in danger and dire in defeat:
Honor the High North ever and ever,
Whether she crown you, or whether she slay;
Suffer her fury, cherish and love her —
He who would rule he must learn to obey.
Men of the High North, fierce mountains love you;
Proud rivers leap when you ride on their breast. ”

“ The wind is howling too shrilly over the barren ice-plains; there are 33 degrees of cold, and summer, with its flowers, is far, far away. I would give a year of my life to hold them in my embrace; they loom so far off in the distance, as if I should never come back to them.
“But the northern lights, with their eternally shifting loveliness, flame over the heavens each day and each night. Look at them; drink oblivion and drink hope from them: they are even as the aspiring soul of man. ”

“ If the West, according to one superstition, is the realm of death, what shall be said of the North? From that quarter no sunny rays are sent forth. The North blast brings ice and snow. A time-honoured tradition makes all fogs and storms rise from the Northern heavens [854] . Even to-day the Wiltshire peasant avers that thunder always comes from the North, though the sound may reach the ear from another direction [855] . The Northern slopes of an undulating meadow are overrun with moss and tussocks of coarse grass. But lichens, lovers of sunlight, avoid the North side of trees. ”

“ The demireps of the deadline had been banished over the Klondike, where, in a colony reached by a crazy rope bridge, their red lights gleamed like semaphores of sin. The dance-halls were still running, but the picturesque impunity of the old muckluck days was gone forever. You looked in vain for the crude scenes where the wilder passions were unleashed, and human nature revealed itself in primal nakedness. Heroism, brutality, splendid achievement, unbridled license, the North seems to bring out all that is best and worst in a man. ”

“ NORTH, ROGER, second Lord North (1530–1600) , was born in 1530, probably at Kirtling in Cambridgeshire, then the home of his father Edward, first baron North [q. v.] ; Sir Thomas North [q. v.] was his youngest brother. He is supposed to have completed his education at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He was early introduced by his father to the court, and appears to have entered eagerly into its amusements, especially that of tilting, in which he excelled. While still a youth, the Princess Elizabeth tied round his arm at a tournament a scarf of red silk. ”

“ To his knowledge, North had in no way acted, up at Headland Harbor, in any way unbecoming a widower. He had not been called upon to relate his private or personal history, and if he had sought diversion among the summer colony of artists and dilettantes, he had, of course, a right to do so.
Yet, the whole effect of the man was suspicious to Wise. ”

“ The West, even on the remote frontiers, is full of magnificent stores of goods, telling of taste as well as luxury; the book-shops are the poorest of all.
The impression of the North-west, thus far seen, is that of tremendous energy, material refinement, much open-mindedness, considerable self-appreciation,’ uncommon sagacity in meeting new problems, generous hospitality, the Old Testament notion of possessing this world, rather more recognition of the pecuniary as the only success than exists in the East and South, intense national enthusiasm, and unblushing and most welcome “Americanism.” ”

“ Then will I dream awhile—content, content.
Men of the High North Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing; Islands of opal float on silver seas; Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing; Pale ports of amber, golden argosies. Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing; Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky; Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing, Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye. Men of the High North, you who have known it; You in whose hearts its splendors have abode ”

“ The past summer seems to me to have proved that while the ice is very unwilling to go back south, it is most ready to go northwest as soon as there is ever so little easterly, not to mention southerly, wind. I therefore believe, as I always have believed, that the drift will become faster as we get farther northwest, and the probability is that the Fram will reach Norway in two years, the expedition having lasted its full three years, as I somehow had a feeling that it would. ”

“ Olaf silently pointed to the star, single and silvery in the red sky. “It is the North Star,” cried the sailor. “It is rising.”
“The North Star hath risen!” said Olaf.
Thorgills started in his sleep, repeating the king’s words. “The North Star hath risen! The North Star hath risen!” ”

“ THE GENIUS OF THE NORTH
It is true that our Northern nature is lofty and strong. Its characteristics may well awaken deep meditation and emotion. When the Goddess of Song has grown up in these surroundings, her view of life is like that mirrored in our lakes, where, between the dark shadows of mountain and trees on the shore, a light-blue sky looks down. Over this mirror the Northern morning and the Northern day, the Northern evening and the Northern night, rise in a glorious beauty. Our Muse kindles a lofty hero's flame, a lofty seer's flame, and always the flame of a lofty immortality. ”

“ Our best old families have been doing the North extensively, and come home to us resolved never to go North again. But it is fashionable to go North, and they will break this resolution when spring comes. Mamma, and Julia Matilda have brought home an immense stock of Northern millinery, all paid for with the hardest of Southern money, which papa declares the greatest evil the state suffers under. He has been down in the wilderness for the last ten years, searching in vain for a remedy. The North is the hungry dog at the door, and he will not be kicked away. ”

“ I heard it speaking bravely from the weak lips of a friend; it is carved in the plastic heart of many a boy. No, I do not doubt the immortalities of the soul; in this community, which I have come to love so much, dwells more than one of John North's immortalities—and will continue to dwell. I, too, live more deeply because John North was here.
He was in no outward way an extraordinary man, nor was his life eventful. He was born in this neighbourhood: I saw him lying quite still this morning in the same sunny room of the same house where he first saw the light of day. ”

“ North was thanked by the governor-general in council and by General Outram for ‘the readiness and resource with which he established and superintended the manufacture of Enfield rifle cartridges, a valuable service, which he rendered without any relaxation of his other duties, in the course of which he was wounded’ (medal and clasp, brevet of lieutenant-colonel, 1858, and a year's service for Lucknow) . North wrote a ‘Journal with the Army in India’ (London, 1858) , an accurate little narrative of personal observation from May 1857 to January 1858, when he was invalided home. ”